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The use of python in most ML/AI research is not even a "glue" language. It is used as a shell. It's merely an interface to some gigantic, highly optimized libr
by powersnail 5y ago
The use of python in most ML/AI research is not even a "glue" language.
It is used as a shell. It's merely an interface to some gigantic, highly optimized libraries (numpy, scipy, and later, Tensorflow, Pytorch, etc.), and it does a very decent job at being an interface.
- The language is easy to grasp, at least the part that is used in data science and ML;
- The syntax is "familiar", as compared with R;
- There are many more general purpose libraries in Python than in R;
- There's no memory management problems;
- The standard library is packed with batteries;
- No compiling, which is important for being a shell;
- It's better than bash etc. at dealing with non-text data, especially numerical values;
- The community was already writing extensions in C;
Some other language could work well, too, had someone written a numpy for it at the time. But there really aren't that many people who are capable, interested, and invested enough to write such a marvelous library.