[adamnemecek]

> This whole argument over which programming language is the best all seems a bit tools-first to me.

Not really, syntax and semantics are adjoints.

[s_Hogg]

Exactly: you're talking about semantics.

In a great many cases, they aren't a first-order issue - which is where my objection to a blanket "don't waste your time" claim comes from.

[adamnemecek]

What is there besides semantics?

[krapht]

Uh, adoption by the community at large? The best program is the one you didn't have to write because a package existed for it already. Just because a language has a foreign function interface doesn't mean it's easy to interact with other libraries.

R, Python, Matlab, and C++ are the big dogs in scientific programming, and the inertia behind having a large community behind than will continue to drive adoption.

[adamnemecek]

That's my point, Julia's interop is unparalleled. Like it legit takes one line to call a python library. You get back a result in native julia type.