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I did my PhD after 20+ years in industry, lots of it programming in C on AIX/HPUX/Solaris systems. I ended up learning Python to complete my research work. Gra

I did my PhD after 20+ years in industry, lots of it programming in C on AIX/HPUX/Solaris systems. I ended up learning Python to complete my research work. Granted compared with Python, C is verbose and the edit-compile-debug-run is a drag. However, C as a language is not too bad. It is the libraries and APIs that slow me down. Often times the abstractions are too leaky or a poor fit for what needs to be done. What works for me is to test and refine algorithms in Python. When it works well, then I use the Python code as pseudo-code and translate to even more optimized C code. It helps to modularize your Python code, so that you only need to port the performance critical portions to C and the rest can remain in Python. Of course, you still need to learn and gain experience with C. Personally I wouldn't put much faith in Python to C transpilers. For optimal performance, you really need to understand your algorithms and data structuring. These days understanding how caching and locality of code and data impacts performance is crucial to writing performant code. BTW have you considered using CUDA, etc for your finite element code? GPGPUs are ideal for that sort of computation. Lots of potential for parallelization.

megaloblasto 2y ago
This is a great response. I really appreciate it, thank you. I think this will be my approach going forward. Its so easy to translate what I'm thinking into python. Once I profile it and figure out what needs to be optimized, I'll write it in C. I realize that gaining experience with C can be helpful, and I am improving. I just really don't enjoy coding in C.
- badpun 2y ago
  The problem with Python is that it can be so slow that you might be waiting for your algorithms to converge for a long time during each run. However, I agree that it is in general useful for sketching.

megaloblasto 2y ago

This is a great response. I really appreciate it, thank you. I think this will be my approach going forward. Its so easy to translate what I'm thinking into python. Once I profile it and figure out what needs to be optimized, I'll write it in C. I realize that gaining experience with C can be helpful, and I am improving. I just really don't enjoy coding in C.

badpun 2y ago
The problem with Python is that it can be so slow that you might be waiting for your algorithms to converge for a long time during each run. However, I agree that it is in general useful for sketching.