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Homogenization of scientific computing – Python is eating other languages’ lunch

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Re: Homogenization of scientific computing – Python is eating other languages’ lunch

#81

Post by michaelhoffman »

xfax wrote: post #77
Xcelerate wrote: post #65

I do scientific computing, and Python is one language I never actually got around to learning for some reason. However, as a long-time hobby, I do have an interest in programming languages so I like exploring things like Haskell, Clojure, Lisp, etc. One language I'm really excited about for scientific computing though is Julia. From a language-design perspective, it's beautiful. It was actually thought out rather tha…

The big question for me is whether Julia will be able to maintain its "purity" as it gains adoption. R probably started out "beautiful" and "thought out" but has lost that edge with years of community driven development. It's also what make it so damn useful -- you can pretty much find anything on CRAN, often multiple implementations of it.

Sorry, no. Even the core S language would not be described by very many users as "beautiful" according to modern standards.

Re: Homogenization of scientific computing – Python is eating other languages’ lunch

#82

Post by xioxox »

mrfusion wrote: post #2

My only question mark from this is matplotlib. I tried it five or six years ago and it seemed clunky to use and install. And worst I couldn't seem to just throw up a plot, I recall there being a lot of settings required. And the plots didn't look good by default you had to fool with fonts, font sizes, etc. Does anyone know if it's improved a lot since then? Otherwise I'm not seeing how it could hold a candle to R's p…

You could try my veusz plotting GUI / plotting package as an alternative to matplotlib: http://home.gna.org/veusz/ I think the output looks nicer than matplotlib by default, and you can have a nice GUI and scriptable interface.

Re: Homogenization of scientific computing – Python is eating other languages’ lunch

#83

Post by collyw »

michaelochurch wrote: post #75
Xcelerate wrote: post #65

I do scientific computing, and Python is one language I never actually got around to learning for some reason. However, as a long-time hobby, I do have an interest in programming languages so I like exploring things like Haskell, Clojure, Lisp, etc. One language I'm really excited about for scientific computing though is Julia. From a language-design perspective, it's beautiful. It was actually thought out rather tha…

What are your thoughts on Clojure's suitability as a go-to language for scientific computing (except in lower-level, high-performance scenarios that might recommend Julia)? I think it has serious potential in this field. It's not there yet, but it's getting there, and the core.matrix standardization helps a lot.

Its functional. Looking at the way bioinformaticians code, that will make it too complicated for many of them. SQL seems too much for many of them.

Re: Homogenization of scientific computing – Python is eating other languages’ lunch

#84

Post by collyw »

jofer wrote: post #74

I do all of my scientific computing in python these days. However, I think it's interesting to compare popularity using stackoverflow (which isn't a great metric, as most scientists aren't aware that it exists): Semi-useless Stackoverflow Popularity Metric -------------------------------------------- Searching for questions tagged "[r]": * 45,119 questions Searching for questions tagged "[matlab] or [simulink]": * 27…

I saw a post on Perl loosing ground to Python based on Stack Overflow posts. Then I remembered, Perl Monks is far better than Stack Overflow for Perl. I would far rather see the discussions that are encouraged there, than the "closed as not constructive" crap on Stack Overflow. (Though to be fair I do see Python getting used more and more, and hear less of Perl).

Re: Homogenization of scientific computing – Python is eating other languages’ lunch

#85

Post by dagw »

CmonDev wrote: post #58
theorique wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 I'm a user of both, fan of both, but the lightness of Lua is a big plus. The main downside, IMO, is that the Lua user base is smaller so there's more need to roll your own solutions for things that Python already has several libraries for.

"roll your own solutions" - that's part of fun!

I agree. However the people paying me would rather I spent my time solving their problems.

Re: Homogenization of scientific computing – Python is eating other languages’ lunch

#86

Post by tokipin »

Xcelerate wrote: post #65

I do scientific computing, and Python is one language I never actually got around to learning for some reason. However, as a long-time hobby, I do have an interest in programming languages so I like exploring things like Haskell, Clojure, Lisp, etc. One language I'm really excited about for scientific computing though is Julia. From a language-design perspective, it's beautiful. It was actually thought out rather tha…

python is a deliberately-straightforward language. i don't see how anyone couldn't become highly proficient in it after writing one or two scripts

Re: Homogenization of scientific computing – Python is eating other languages’ lunch

#87

Post by chillingeffect »

jofer wrote: post #74

I do all of my scientific computing in python these days. However, I think it's interesting to compare popularity using stackoverflow (which isn't a great metric, as most scientists aren't aware that it exists): Semi-useless Stackoverflow Popularity Metric -------------------------------------------- Searching for questions tagged "[r]": * 45,119 questions Searching for questions tagged "[matlab] or [simulink]": * 27…

Matlab has its own community.

There have been 25,000 answers in the last 30 days. [1].

It has 100,000 users. [2]

That stackoverflow metric is not great. It is semi-useless.

[1] http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/activities [2] http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/about/answers/

Re: Homogenization of scientific computing – Python is eating other languages’ lunch

#88

Post by jofer »

collyw wrote: post #84
jofer wrote: post #74

I do all of my scientific computing in python these days. However, I think it's interesting to compare popularity using stackoverflow (which isn't a great metric, as most scientists aren't aware that it exists): Semi-useless Stackoverflow Popularity Metric -------------------------------------------- Searching for questions tagged "[r]": * 45,119 questions Searching for questions tagged "[matlab] or [simulink]": * 27…

I saw a post on Perl loosing ground to Python based on Stack Overflow posts. Then I remembered, Perl Monks is far better than Stack Overflow for Perl. I would far rather see the discussions that are encouraged there, than the "closed as not constructive" crap on Stack Overflow. (Though to be fair I do see Python getting used more and more, and hear less of Perl).

Very true. Similarly, there probably are a lot more matlab questions on MatlabCentral than on SO.

However, stackoverflow is at least easily searchable and widely used. It's certainly not a purely random sample, though.

(On a side note, I do feel like the excessive closing of questions on SO has gotten a bit better recently. That's just my opinion, though.)

Re: Homogenization of scientific computing – Python is eating other languages’ lunch

#89

Post by jofer »

chillingeffect wrote: post #87
jofer wrote: post #74

I do all of my scientific computing in python these days. However, I think it's interesting to compare popularity using stackoverflow (which isn't a great metric, as most scientists aren't aware that it exists): Semi-useless Stackoverflow Popularity Metric -------------------------------------------- Searching for questions tagged "[r]": * 45,119 questions Searching for questions tagged "[matlab] or [simulink]": * 27…

Matlab has its own community. There have been 25,000 answers in the last 30 days. [1]. It has 100,000 users. [2] That stackoverflow metric is not great. It is semi-useless. [1] http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/activities [2] http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/about/answers/

And thus the semi-useless title :)

I'm quite aware of MatlabCentral, and it's a _very_ active community. Similarly, there are other forums for scipy, etc (mostly mailing lists). Traditionally, this is where the majority of questions were answered in the scientific python community, though lately stackoverflow has gained popularity.

I wasn't claiming it was a complete sample. I used it as an unbiased random sample, but it's obviously not completely unbiased, either.

I do think it's fair to say that usage python as a whole (of which the scientific python community is a very small part) is larger than matlab usage as a whole. That alone is not a good reason to choose a tool, but it does have some advantages. That's the point I was trying to get at.

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