Is D a good choice for embedding python/octave/julia

[Bastien via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Sunday, 13 March 2016 at 18:12:07 UTC, cym13 wrote:
> On Sunday, 13 March 2016 at 13:02:16 UTC, Bastien wrote:
>> Hi, apologies for what may be a fairly obvious question to 
>> some.
>>
>> ## The background:
>> I have been tasked with building software to process data 
>> output by scientific instruments for non-experts - basically 
>> with GUI, menus, easy config files (JSON or similar) - and the 
>> ability to do some serious number crunching.
>>
>> My background is python/octave and would be happy building it 
>> in python (or god forbid, even octave), but it would end up 
>> clunky and slow once ported to a standalone executable. Hence 
>> why I'm looking at other languages. D caught my eye.
>>
>> ## The problem:
>> The sticking point is unless I commit the rest of my life to 
>> maintaining this software, I can't write it all in D. The 
>> algorithms change/are improved yearly; the output format from 
>> the instrument changes once in a while and therefore these 
>> need to be easily scripted/modified by other (non-programming) 
>> scientists and the community that only really know python and 
>> octave.
>>
>> Essentially I'd like a D front end, and a D back-end that does 
>> most of the memory and data management but calls and 
>> interprets .py, .m and/or .jl scripts (python, matlab, julia) 
>> to know how to treat the data. This leaves the py/m/jl scripts 
>> visible to be edited by the end user.
>>
>> ## The question:
>> Can it be done?
>> Does this entirely defeat the point of using D and I should 
>> just code it in python because of the added overheads?
>>
>>
>> Thanks for your help!
>> B
>
>
> I don't have much experience in mixing python and D but here's 
> my take on it:
>
> D is a great language but it's not a great glue language. I 
> know of no
> binding to Julia but good bindings to python exist (pyd as said 
> above).
> However, if what you want to keep in python is the algorithms 
> themselves then
> I don't see the point. If I were to mix the two languages I'd 
> use python to
> do the user interface, some module interface in order to link 
> the tool to
> others maybe, but the algorithm would definitely be the one 
> thing I would do
> in D because that's what D is for.

Thanks for all the very useful replies!
Overall seems that D on its own may be better. May not be such a 
bad thing in the end if it moves the scientists away from 
commerical matlab and the great python 2/3 schism.

I guess my resilience to using D for the algorithms is because 
with python, I have access to numpy and matplotlib. There do seem 
to be some ongoing developments though:
http://forum.dlang.org/post/mailman.4923.1434903477.7663.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com

So maybe that will all change. I've just ordered a couple books 
which will hopefully give me a bit more insight into the 
feasibility of this project. Otherwise, I'll fall back on 
python...