On Mar 26, 3:20 pm, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > OK... > I've been told that Both Fortran and Python are easy to read, and are > quite useful in creating scientific apps for the number crunching, but > then Python is a tad slower than Fortran because of its a high level > language nature, so what are the advantages of using Python for > creating number crunching apps over Fortran?? > Thanks > Chris
Personally, my #1 reason for favoring Python is the interpreter. When developing code which implements complex algorithms/calculations, I always find I want to play around with things during development. Using Python's interpreter this is a real joy! Now, I don't mean tweaking the almost-finalized implementation - I mean tweaking bits and pieces of code during all stages of development. For instance: Optimizing an algorithm's parameters by trying different combinations out under different circumstances. Or checking the potential gains from pre-processing something. Or writing a specialized version of a certain function and testing it for correctness and performance. Etc, etc. As for my background - I have developed "number-crunching" software with C, C++ and Python over the past 5 years, and have recently learned Fortran as well. Python has consistently failed to disappoint me :) - Tal Einat reduce(lambda m,x:[m[i]+s[-1] for i,s in enumerate(sorted(m))], [[chr(154-ord(c)) for c in '.&-&,l.Z95193+179-']]*18)[3] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list