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Comment by andreasvc | Hacker News Reader

First, there's no reason to only associate "Python" with "the language", it is an environment, ecosystem, etc. It's not interesting to narrowly focus on the efficiency of the interpreter.

Second, it is an inherent feature of the design of CPython that its C API allows tight integration with external libraries in C. Cython does not just glue C and Python together, it does this in a way which makes the integration easier and safer than doing it by hand (e.g., generating correct reference counting code). All of this is a direct benefit of Python and its scientific ecosystem.

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> First, there's no reason to only associate "Python" with "the language", it is an environment, ecosystem, etc. It's not interesting to narrowly focus on the efficiency of the interpreter.

Sure, but that's how people construe the post, which I think the author knows too.

The post could have been accurately titled "Python has certain libraries that are fast enough for HPSC", but that wouldn't have generated nearly as much interest as "Why I still use Python for HPSC".

People want to see others say good things about their favourite language, which in this case is Python.

I knew where the article was going (with the libraries), but still wanted to read it because even I wanted to see someone compliment Python itself, because it used to be my "primary language".

Python is a good language, but to the extent you're not using those highly optimized "C-libraries", it just doesn't perform well, and it's not suited for concurrency. That's a part of why I switched to Clojure.

Obivously clojure, being written in Java (at least the intersting parts - collections and multithreading) - isn't fast (if Python isn't fast).

Right, but I wouldn't claim it is. I'd say something like "The JVM is fast" :)

Just because people construe the post that way doesn't mean they're right. Truth is not democratic.

You can make any title more accurate by making it longer and more specific, but picking a good title is a trade off against other things as well. A charitable reader would not necessarily insist on the narrow interpretation of Python the language you insist on.

And your title is not more accurate, because it's not just the existence of certain libraries, it's also the way they can be easily glued together and incrementally improved. Compare this to say Java, where you'd have to use JNI to use those same libraries, which is much more cumbersome to the point that most people prefer to write everything in Java.

> People want to see others say good things about their favourite language

To be honest I only think this only describes people that enjoy internet debates on programming languages. If what you are interested in is getting work done, you don't care about the merits of a particular tool in isolation but about end results. Hypothetically, you could find the "perfect" language but if it doesn't have users or libraries, it's of no use, and therefore the insistence of discussing only this or that language is pointless.

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