[SciPy-user] python (against java) advocacy for scientific projects

[Marko Loparic]

Thanks Sturla and all the others for this very interesting discussion!

> There is nothing that says a program written in
> Python must be 'pure Python'. If you migrate that offending 5% to
> Fortran or C, you would beat Java in terms of speed, and still retain
> all the advantages of Python. That is why we don't have performance
> problems when using Python for HPC. We don't use Python all the time; we
> use Python where it is convenient.

Specifically on this point, playing the devil's advocate, one could
argue that using java we could also migrate the offending routine to
C. Is there an element to argue that the Python/C mix is simpler or
more powerful than the same for java/C?

I saw also somewhere the argument that python tools containing C/C++
routines like numpy and wxpython are more naturally or easily made for
python than for java. Is that really true?