Fortran vs Python - Newbie Question

[Tal Einat]

On Mar 26, 3:20 pm, "Noma... at gmail.com" <Noma... at gmail.com> 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]