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0 pointslifthrasiir2y ago0 comments

You don't need any C knowledge to use numpy. In fact, its conceptual similarity with Matlab is possibly the single most important reason for its popularity. Many other problems do need specialized treatments that would indeed require other languages, but numpy is not a good counterexample.

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jakobnissen2y ago· 1 in thread

You're missing the point. The point is that, for any application, Python needs an underlying C library to be fast. So if you need to solve problems where no such library exists, Python is slow.

In other words, Python IS slow, but it can call fast code written in other languages.

lifthrasiirOP2y ago

That's true but irrelevant here, especially given the original claim:

> adding performance to an existing Python program requires dropping into a different language

...is demonstrably false for a significant class of programs that can be rewritten into the array paradigm. The benchmark should have picked other numerical problem to avoid this issue. The Computer Language Benchmarks Game, for example, uses the `n-body` problem for this purpose.

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