Hi Chris, Python is more of a scripting language, i.e. if you want to get something done quickly. It is not meant to do large scale projects. As an example, it is not strongly typed so the same variable can hold strings, ints, chars etc. This might look cool at the beginning but once the program size gets larger it becomes too difficult to debug/maintain. Also, if there are more than one developers than unless your Python program is documented well, it will be difficult for a third person to easily follow what you have done. Now lets come to your application. Both languages can easily handle complex numbers but what is the scale of your computation? If you want to multiply two large matrices then none are suitable (go for C/C++) but for small application both are fine. Both languages are good for handling small amounts of texts but struggle when you have a few hundred thousand lines of text. What are your integration requirements? Where do you want to deploy your application? Python is easy to learn. Since the concepts are quite similar, may be you want to develop your application in Python and then port it to Java depending upon the requirements. Hope this helps. Cheers, Usama Chris O'Halloran wrote:
I am looking for some thoughts/opinions on the merits of these two languages.
Over the years I book a few books on Java including Java in Nutshell Java Foundation Class Java for Scientist and Engineers
The latter being the most useful to me. However, I've never really got the hang of how it all works. I don't have a formal programming background
In recent times, I've come across Python and lately stumbled upon SciPy,ipython, NumPy and matplotlib.sourceforge.net. I've also noticed that Python has PyQt that enables you to use the Qt and poss KDE for widgets and gui interface. KDE is the desktop of choice for me and QT Designer are all "sudo apt-get install " away.
Both Python and Java are cross platform which a plus.
What I would like to do is put together small applications often using complex numbers and array for the engineering work that I do. Sometimes importing csv text files containing data from measurment devices.
I have always thought Java was the tool for this but lately, I've noticed how easy it is to make things work with Python. especially the interactive "try a line of code, did it do what you wanted?, no, try this, ah, that works"
I'm thinking that Python might provide the fast feed back approach that gets you enthused about actually coding than the steper learning curve of a more comprehensive language and not actually knowing where to start with a gui or even just how to get the IDE to use the classpath you want.
I'd be interested if people had thoughts or comments on the merits.
Cheers _______________________________________________ wlug mailing list | wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Unsubscribe: http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug