[7thaccount]

Nobody cares about what you're saying though (with respect) in this area. It's all about the ecosystem or Anaconda distribution itself rather than just the core language. I agree that what you're saying is accurate, but it also happens to be irrelevant in this particular case.

Numerical methods and data science are mostly done by engineers, mathematicians, and other random stem folks. I've yet to meet someone who is even cognizant that Numpy is really calling out to some low level C, C++, or Fortran library. They just know that you call a library like any other and the code works.

If you're trying to say that any language with FFI capabilities can do that, you'd be right, but it also doesn't matter much. Python has somehow found a sweet spot where it's easy to learn and onboard people and there is support for a lot of stuff with relatively low hassle. It certainly isn't lisp, but somehow seems to be orders of magnitude more successful.

I've been searching for a tool/language/ecosystem to replace Python for ages, but nothing ends up becoming close. I spent a significant amount of time learning lisp, but a lot of what I saw (besides the power of macros and restarting) was just a less intuitive way of doing things I could easily do in Python, Ruby, or Perl. Lisp is secret alien technology if you're coming from C or C++, but coming from Python it seems closer to a wash.

[enriquto]

> I've yet to meet someone who is even cognizant that Numpy is really calling out to some low level C

then you've never met anybody who builds the tools that you use. Which is alright. But if you disparage their point of view then you sound a bit funny.

[7thaccount]

In this particular niche', yes. But again, that is almost entirely irrelevant to the vast majority of the millions of scientific Python users.

I'd love to write my own solution in assembly or C where I give birth to every function, but nobody has time for that level of monumental effort. Low level matrix libraries have a lot of inertia for a reason.

I'm not disparaging anybody's point of view. Yours is certainly valid for a small group of elite users. I'm just trying to point out that it is only a valid point for a very small group. Most simply view these things from the perspective of the entire ecosystem. Even scientists well aware of the C internals will not always use that knowledge.