7 ms·
Yeah, interestingly, I have this impression that Python is a modern-day Fortran. (Largely for the reasons you describe in the third category of programmers.)
by a-nikolaev 8y ago
Yeah, interestingly, I have this impression that Python is a modern-day Fortran. (Largely for the reasons you describe in the third category of programmers.)
- nostrademons 8y agoOn some level that's literally true: when you run NumPy or SciPy code, most of your basic array manipulations are done by BLAS, which are a set of very tightly optimized linear algebra routines originally written in Fortran.
- adw 8y agoA very large part of the answer to "why do people use Python?" is "why did physicists adopt Python en masse in the early 2000s?" and a large part of the answer to _that_ is "f2py exists"...
- bigger_cheese 8y agoAt least among my colleagues (process engineering) the language is basically an afterthought. Your slide rule analogy is right on. For a lot of the people I work with code is just a way of representing mathematics. So you end up with "Fortran written in every language" Here is a snippet of code (this is written in C but I guarantee most of my colleagues would write this the same regardless of it it were fortran, python, Matlab what ever). for (i=m1;i < m2; i++) { //f(p)^2 = (u^T)(Q^T)(D^2)Qu and F(dF/dp) = (u^T)(Q^T)(D^2)Q(du/dp) g =h; h = (v[i+1]-v[i])/(x[i+1]-x[i]); g = h - g - r1[i-1]*r[i-1]-r2[i-2]*r[i-2]; ... } Here's some SQL SELECT t2.Line, t2.Slope, t1.X, t1.Y, t1.Y - (t2.Slope * t1.X) as Intercept /* B = Y -Mx */