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I see nothing in Python 3 itself directed towards number crunching. Its integer performance actually worse than for Python 2 (because integers in 3 are big inte
by citrin_ru 6y ago
I see nothing in Python 3 itself directed towards number crunching. Its integer performance actually worse than for Python 2 (because integers in 3 are big integers). nympy can be considered a DSL based on Python and it was used with Python 2 too.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Jtsummers 6y agoI don't understand the point of your comment. I called out numpy for number crunching explicitly along with later versions of Python 2. I didn't say Python was good for number crunching, but that it's being used for number crunching and listed the library that has largely driven that trend (by making the language effective at number crunching).
- 4ec0755f5522 6y agoYour phrasing actually did very much imply that Python the language was intended ("directed") for these tasks. >Python 3 (and later versions of Python 2) has been more directed (in the past decade) towards number crunching I don't know where "more directed" means anything but planned/intended e.g. you are saying here that the Python core devs have been building a language as a data analysis tool. (This is obviously up to some interpretations and it's fair to say some poeple won't read it this way at all). It sounds like you mean to say the growth/use has been in data analysis due to the Python-based tools that have grown up around the language, the ecosystem. I would agree with you.
- Jtsummers 6y agoDirected is an overloaded term. How people are using it is what the language is directed towards this is the sense I mean. Directed could also mean intended by the developers of the language itself. This is not what I mean. Numpy is a secondary capability added by others, not core to the language proper.
- citrin_ru 6y agoCould you please elaborate then in which way Python 3 has been more directed towards number crunching? I see that Fortran and Chapel are designed for number crunching, but Python IMHO used for this because it is a popular language in the first place and people having a computational problem choose the tool they already like.
- Jtsummers 6y agoI'm talking about what people are using it for, where the community (not necessarily the language's core devs) are directing its use. Contrast to the 00s, where it was not (as a general rule) being used for number crunching activities (ML or just regular number crunching a la Fortran or Matlab at the time). In the 10s, Python has been heavily used for applications in machine learning (and obviously number crunching heavy activity) and scientific simulation, data (number heavy) analysis, statistics work. Prior to the 10s, those domains were more the purview of Fortran (as you list), Matlab, R (statistics), and others. In the 00s, Python was more used for web applications and text processing (it was a "better" (subjective so in quotes) Perl).