Mathematica language vs. python
Jason Grout
looks like people are asked to rate different languages against
different statements:
http://hammerprinciple.com/therighttool/items/mathematica
Notice that the ratings are most dissimilar from Python (see bottom of
page)! Indeed, it is very interesting to look at the comparison page:
http://hammerprinciple.com/therighttool/items/mathematica/python
Thanks,
Jason
Keshav Kini
> Notice that the ratings are most dissimilar from Python (see bottom of
> page)! Indeed, it is very interesting to look at the comparison page:
>
> http://hammerprinciple.com/therighttool/items/mathematica/python
I find it a little bizarre that almost 40% of respondents consider
Python better at symbolic manipulation than Mathematica. Mathematica is
practically built for symbolic manipulation, and in Sage a lot of hard
work has gone into pynac because plain Python does not have symbolics
support.
Why does Mathematica supposedly have a strong static type system? It's
an interpreted language...
Also interesting is that Mathematica beats Python at numeric computing
(62%), but Python strikes back with a victory in scientific computing
(81%)... huh?
Certainly an interesting listing, though maybe one should not set too
much stock by it since there are only a couple dozen respondents as yet.
-Keshav
----
Join us in #sagemath on irc.freenode.net !
rjf
form of it. "It's" is a contraction for "it is". The possessive is "its".
If you want a slightly more informative comparison, try common lisp vs python.
Crowdsourcing on opinions of programming languages seems like a pretty
poor way of garnering information other than uncalibrated, uh, opinions.
Dr. David Kirkby
> Jason Grout<jason...@creativetrax.com> writes:
>> Notice that the ratings are most dissimilar from Python (see bottom of
>> page)! Indeed, it is very interesting to look at the comparison page:
>>
>> http://hammerprinciple.com/therighttool/items/mathematica/python
>
> I find it a little bizarre that almost 40% of respondents consider
> Python better at symbolic manipulation than Mathematica. Mathematica is
> practically built for symbolic manipulation, and in Sage a lot of hard
> work has gone into pynac because plain Python does not have symbolics
> support.
There appear to be numerous strange results on that site, so I take the results
with a pinch of salt. I decided to compare MATLAB and Mathematica.
http://hammerprinciple.com/therighttool/items/mathematica/matlab
1) "I use this language out of choice"
7 out of 8 picked Mathematica over Matlab
Now it is pretty clear to me that there are FAR more people programming in
MATLAB than Mathematica, and a lot of people like MATLAB. (Do a search on a job
site and see how many jobs want Mathematica programmers vs MATLAB ones). So why
87% program in Mathematica out of choice is strange to me.
2) "When I run into problems my colleagues can provide me with immediate help
with this language"
7 out of 9 picked Matlab over Mathematica.
Funny that result, given the result to (1). 7 out of 8 chose Mathematica over
MATLAB out of choice, but 7 out of 9 find their colleagues can help them with
MATLAB more than Mathematica.
3) "When I write code in this language I can be very sure it is correct"
7 out of 8 picked Mathematica over Matlab
Come on, which a stupid question. How the **** can you be much more sure
Mathematica code is more correct than MATLAB code?
The site looks good for a laugh, but does not appear to have any value other
than that to me.
Dave
Dr. David Kirkby
> work has gone into pynac because plain Python does not have symbolics
> support.
> -Keshav
A bizarre result. Clearly Mathematica is better at symbolics. Arguably it is the
best language for this.
Perhaps it's skewed by the fact considerably more people use Python than
Mathematica. If 1000x as many people use Python than do Mathematica, than you
might expect more people to find Python good for symbolics than you do Mathematica.
The results seem odd all around.
The rest of it should go to /dev/null!
Dave
Simon King
On 2012-04-25, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
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>
> Crowdsourcing on opinions of programming languages seems like a pretty
> poor way of garnering information other than uncalibrated, uh, opinions.
+1
I went to that page and answered a few questions. But to be honest, I don't
believe that the "results" of the poll are based on more than *preferences*
(they just ask for rankings, and I wouldn't even call that an "opinion") of
a currently very *small* sample of people (hence, the results are probably
insignificant), the sample being chosen in a way that is probably rather
biased.
By "biased", I mean that people will of course only participate in the poll,
if they happen to learn about its existence. The providers of that web page
will certainly not directly ask a randomly chosen subset of the
programmers and mathematicians they find in the Yellow Pages. And I guess
open source communities are more likely to learn about the existence of such
polls than closed source "communities" - thus, I expect a bias towards
open source.
Sorry for not cross-posting to sage-flame,
Simon
Dr. David Kirkby
> Someone should tell the survey people that "it's" is not the possessive
> form of it. "It's" is a contraction for "it is". The possessive is
> "its".
>
> If you want a slightly more informative comparison, try common lisp vs
> python.
will be used by a different group of people.
I can see a point in comparing MATLAB, Mathematica and Maple. I can see a point
in comparing C, C++, Python, and Fortran. But there are some combinations where
see no real reason to compare them, and Lisp and Python are in that category.
Comparing Lisp to Pure or Mathematica seems a bit more logical.
.
Dave