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What are the best languages for scientific computation?

10

Options
Considered

113

User
Recs.

Jan 29, 2024

Last
Updated

10 Options Considered

Best languages for scientific computation	Price	Platforms	Current stable version
66 Julia	Free	Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD	1.5.3
-- Python	Free	Windows, Linux, macOS, AIX, IBM i, iOS, z/OS, Solaris, VMS	3.9.1
-- Nim	-	Windows, MacOS/iOS, Linux /Android/Termux, *BSD, Solaris/SmartOS, HaikuOS, lots of others	2.0.0
-- C	FREE	-	C'18
-- Fortran	Free	-	-

Julia

Top Pro

Powerful n-dimensional arrays

Julia has built in n-dimensional arrays similar in functionality as Python's numpy. See More

Top Con

Young language with limited support

Julia was released in 2012. Due to its short existence, there is a limited amount of support for the language. Very few libraries exist as of yet, and the community is still quite small (though growing quickly). See More

CourageousTeojusin's Experience

Superb language for scientific programming. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD

Current stable version:1.5.3

Type Model:Dynamically Typed

Top Pro

Almost as fast as C

Julia runs almost as fast as (and in fact in some cases faster than) C code. See More

Top Con

Too much dependencies to load to make it work...

Before Julia 1.0, you could just load a few libraries, now you need to explicitly load a ton of them to make things work. See More

SpiritedPorphyrion's Experience

Easy for programming and run fast See More

Top Pro

High-level code

Julia provides a high level of abstraction, making platform-independent programming trivial and easing the learning curve. See More

Top Con

1-based array and column major

This design probably comes from Matlab, but makes it unnatural to interface C and C++ and python. See More

JoyfulPyvsyansa's Experience

Let's be honest: it was good before the cluttering of Julia 1.0 See More

Top Pro

Nice regular syntax

Julia code is easy to read and avoids a lot of unnecessary special symbols and fluff. It uses newline to end statements and "end" to end blocks so there is no need for lots of semicolons and curly braces. It is regular in that unless it is a variable assignment, function name always comes first. No need to be confused about whether something is a method on an object or a free function. Unlike Python and Ruby, since you can annotate the types a function operates on, you can overload function names, so that you can use the same function name for many data types. So you can keep simple descriptive function names and not have to invent artificial function names to separate them from the type they operate on. See More

ReliableNechtan's Experience

Julia runs fast, has some really good syntax (like the "function"! to modify the input, so intuitive for plots), and really seems up and coming See More

Top Pro

Great standard REPL

Out of the box Julia has a very good Read-Eval-Print-Loop, which both completes functions and types, as well as completion based on history of previous statements. It integrates well with the shell and has an excellent online help system. See More

Top Pro

Function and operator broadcasting

You can perform operations on scalars, for example 2^2 or [1, 2, 3].^2. See More

Top Pro

Function overloading

You can have multiple functions with the same name, but doing different things depending on function arguments and argument types. See More

Top Pro

Strong dynamic typing

Dynamic and high level, but does not isolate the user from properly thinking about types. Can do explicit type signatures which is great for teaching structured thinking. See More

Top Pro

Written in itself

The Julia language is written in itself to a much larger extent than most other languages, so a budding programmer can read through the depths of the standard library and learn exactly how things work all the way down to the low-level bit-twiddling details, which can be englightening. See More

Top Pro

Amazing learning curve

Julia requires no boilerplate code – a beginner needs to write only the parts they care about. This combined with the REPL provides the best learning experience available. See More

Top Pro

REPL-based

The Julia REPL allows quickly testing how some code behaves and gives access to documentation and package management immediately in the REPL. See More

Top Pro

Great set of libraries stolen from Python

Top Pro

Strong Metaprogramming

Julia allows you to edit Julia code in the language itself and write powerful macros. It is a great introduction to metaprogramming features. See More

Python

Top Pro

Easy to learn

Top Con

Slow when used incorrectly

Make sure all the work is done inside of the libraries, not in python code. See More

PositiveTanfana's Experience

It has CAS modules like Sympy 👍 See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, macOS, AIX, IBM i, iOS, z/OS, Solaris, VMS

Current stable version:3.9.1

GZipped size:22.5MB

Typing discipline:Dynamically typed

Top Pro

Great libraries like Numpy and SciPy

Top Con

Speed can matter

Python, like many interpreted and untyped languages, is fairly slow compared to compiled languages like C, C++ or Java. Sometimes this won't matter, but when it does you're talking about twenty times slower than C/C++ and ten times slowed than Java. You need to have a plan for what you will do if it is too slow. See More

Vlad Korolev's Experience

Most popular language for scientific computation these days. See More

Top Pro

Great machine learning libraries like Tensorflow

Top Con

Inelegant and messy language design

The first impression given by well-chosen Python sample code is quite attractive. However, very soon a lack of unifying philosophy / theory behind the language starts to show more and more. This includes issues with OOP such as lack of consistency in the use of object methods vs. functions (e.g., is it x.sort() or sorted(x), or both for lists?), made worse by too many functions in global name space. Method names via mangling and the init(self) look and feel like features just bolted on an existing simpler language. See More

Top Pro

Clear syntax

Python's syntax is very clear and readable, making it excellent for beginners. The lack of extra characters like semicolons and curly braces reduces distractions, letting beginners focus on the meaning of the code. Significant whitespace also means that all code is properly and consistently indented. The language also uses natural english words such as 'and' and 'or', meaning that beginners need to learn fewer obscure symbols. On top of this, Python's dynamic type system means that code isn't cluttered with type information, which would further distract beginners from what the code is doing. See More

Top Con

Limited support for functional programming

While Python imports some very useful and elegant bits and pieces from FP (such as list comprehensions, higher-order functions such as map and filter), the language's support for FP falls short of the expectations raised by included features. For example, no tail call optimisation or proper lambdas. Referential transparency can be destroyed in unexpected ways even when it seems to be guaranteed. Function composition is not built into the core language. Etc. See More

Top Pro

Lots of tutorials

Python's popularity and beginner friendliness has led to a wealth of tutorials and example code on the internet. This means that when beginners have questions, they're very likely to be able to find an answer on their own just by searching. This is an advantage over some languages that are not as popular or covered as in-depth by its users. See More

Top Con

Too opinionated for a general-purpose programming language

While it's a good language to learn and use after you have mastered a couple of other less rigid programming languages, it's definitely not good for first-time learners. Both the language itself and its community have made it quite clear that you should do everything the "Pythonic way" to get the best results, that it feels more like an opinionated framework instead of a general-purpose programming language, which means if you are a first-time learner and getting too "tuned" to the "Pythonic way" it will be much harder for you to learn other less-opinionated languages compared to the other way around. Like any programming languages and/or frameworks, I'd recommend first-time learners to learn less opinionated ones first to open up your mind, then learn some of the more opinionated ones to increase productivity for specific fields of works. After all, programming languages are just some utilities for the human mind to interface with the computers, and there are more suitable tools for different tasks, and you should master the "Pythonic way" (after you already have adequate experience in computer programming) instead of locking your mind too close to the "Pythonic way" as a first-time learner. See More

Top Pro

Easy to get started

On top of the wealth of tutorials and documentation, and the fact that it ships with a sizeable standard library, Python also ships with both an IDE (Integrated Development Environment: A graphical environment for editing running and debugging your code); as well as a text-based live interpreter. Both help users to get started trying out code immediately, and give users immediate feedback that aids learning. See More

Top Con

Not good for mobile development

You can use frameworks like Kivy, but if your ultimate goal is to write mobile apps Python may not be the best first choice. See More

Top Pro

Comes with extensive libraries

Python ships with a large standard library, including modules for everything from writing graphical applications, running servers, and doing unit testing. This means that beginners won't need to spend time searching for tools and libraries just to get started on their projects. See More

Top Con

Fairly new

Way newer and more futuristic than stupid langs like C and C++. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Installs and works on every major operating systems if not already installed by default (Linux, macOS). See More

Top Pro

Good documentation

The Python community has put a lot of work into creating excellent documentation filled with plain english describing functionality. Contrast this with other languages, such as Java, where documentation often contains a dry enumeration of the API. As a random example, consider GUI toolkit documentation - the tkinter documentation reads almost like a blog article, answering questions such as 'How do I...', whereas Java's Swing documentation contains dry descriptions that effectively reiterate the implementation code. On top of this, most functions contain 'Doc Strings', which mean that documentation is often immediately available, without even the need to search the internet. See More

Top Pro

Active and helpful community

Python has an active and helpful community, such as the comp.lang.python Google Groups, StackOverflow, reddit, etc. See More

Top Pro

Import Turtle

Do something visually interesting in minutes by using the turtle standard library package. Turtle graphics is a popular way for introducing programming to kids. It was part of the original Logo programming language developed by Wally Feurzig and Seymour Papert in 1966. Imagine a robotic turtle starting at (0, 0) in the x-y plane. After an import turtle, give it the command turtle.forward(15), and it moves (on-screen!) 15 pixels in the direction it is facing, drawing a line as it moves. Give it the command turtle.right(25), and it rotates in-place 25 degrees clockwise. Turtle can draw intricate shapes using programs that repeat simple moves. Example Turtle Star Drawing from turtle import * color('red', 'yellow') begin_fill() while True: forward(200) left(170) if abs(pos()) < 1: break end_fill() done() See More

Top Pro

Has features of both high and low level language

It is somewhere between C and Java. See More

Top Pro

Advanced community projects

There are outstanding projects being actively developed in Python. Projects such as the following to name a random four: Django: a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. iPython: a rich architecture for interactive computing with shells, a notebook and which is embeddable as well as wrapping and able to wrap libraries written in other languages. Mercurial: a free, distributed source control management tool. It efficiently handles projects of any size and offers an easy and intuitive interface. PyPy: a fast, compliant alternative implementation of the Python language (2.7.3 and 3.2.3) with several advantages and distinct features including a Just-in-Time compiler for speed, reduced memory use, sandboxing, micro-threads for massive concurrency, ... When you move on from being a learner you can still stay with Python for those advanced tasks. See More

Top Pro

Good introduction to data structures

Python's built-in support and syntax for common collections such as lists, dictionaries, and sets, as well as supporting features like list comprehensions, foreach loops, map, filter, and others, makes their use much easier to get into for beginners. Python's support for Object Orient Programming, but with dynamic typing, also makes the topic of Data Structures much more accessible, as it takes the focus off of more tedious aspects, such as type casting and explicitly defined interfaces. Python's convention of only hiding methods through prefacing them with underscores further takes the focus off of details such as Access Modifiers common in languages such as Java and C++, allowing beginners to focus on the core concepts, without much worry for language specific implementation details. See More

Top Pro

Supports various programming paradigms

Python supports three 'styles' of programming: Procedural programming. Object orientated programming. Functional programming. All three styles can be seamlessly interchanged and can be learnt in harmony in Python rather than being forced into one point of view, which is helpful for easing confusion over the debate amongst programmers over which programming paradigm is best, as developers will get the chance to try all of them. See More

Top Pro

Very similar to pseudo-code

When learning Computer Science concepts such as algorithms and data structures, many texts use pseudo-code. Having a language such as Python whose syntax is very similar to pseudo-code is an obvious advantage that makes learning easier. See More

Top Pro

Has many libraries for scientific computing, data mining and machine learning

Python is commonly used in data science and has many libraries for scientific computing, such as numpy, pandas, matplotlib, etc. See More

Top Pro

Easy for new users and experienced programmers

If you can get over whitespace formatting. See More

Top Pro

Mobile versions

Mobile versions are available but can be difficult to find. Examples for Android are pydroid and qpython. See More

Top Pro

Designed by a mathematician

Top Pro

Easy to find jobs

Python's popularity also means that it's commonly in use in production at many companies - it's even one of the primary languages in use at Google. Furthermore, as a concise scripting language, it's very commonly used for smaller tasks, as an alternative to shell scripts. Python was also designed to make it easy to interface with other languages such as C, and so it is often used as 'glue code' between components written in other languages. See More

Top Pro

It's really simple

It's very simple for understanding how programming works. If you don't like programming in Python, you probably won't like programming. It is a good way to find out with little investment. If you like, it is a great language. I wouldn't look for a language that has everything you eventually need to know in programming, such as static typing, in my first language. It should be easy to learn. You can pick up the hard stuff later if you tackle C or C++ or assembler. It will make learning them much easier. If you start with them, you might quit programming due to the difficulty of learning. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn, More to Go

It is very easy to learn and it has community support and many categories available. See More

Top Pro

One right way to do things

One of the Guiding Principles of Python is that there should be only one obvious way to do things. This is helpful for beginners because it means that there is likely a best answer for questions about how things should be done. See More

Top Pro

Static typing via mypy

Python's syntax supports optional type annotations for use with a third-party static type checker, which can catch a certain class of bugs at compile time. This also makes it easier for beginners to gradually transition to statically typed languages instead of wrestling with the compiler from the start. See More

Top Pro

Can be used in many domains

Python can be used across virtually all domains: scientific, network, games, graphics, animation, web development, machine learning, and data science. See More

Top Pro

Includes pygame library

Want to start game development? No problem! Using pygame open-source library you can fast begin creating games without worrying about pointers or undefined behaviors which they exists in C/C++. See More

Top Pro

Best chances of earning most money

According to Quartz, Python programming skills on average earn $100,000 per year. Closely followed by Java, C++, JavaScript, C, and R with $90,000 per year and above. See More

Top Pro

Interpreters for JS, Microtontrollers, .Net , Java & others

Python is not limited to just be cross platform. It goes far beyond all high level languages since it can run on top of several other frameworks & architectures : Examples of interpreters: Standard (PC Win/Lin/Mac, ARM, Raspberry, Smartphones): CPython usually, but some more specialized for smartphones: Kyvi, QPython, ... Web Browser JS : Brython, PyJS, .Net : IronPython Java: Jython Microcontrollers with WiFi like ESP8266 or ESP32: MicroPython Can be statically compiled (instead of interpreted) with Cython. (Do not mix up with cPython) With python, you're sure your code can run (almost) everywhere, from 2€ computers to the most expensives. So, for instance, with Jython you can access the Java libraries with Python language. See More

Nim

Top Pro

Type interferencing

You only need to specify types in your procedures and objects - you don't need to specify type when you're creating a new variable (unless you're creating it without initialization). See More

Top Con

You won't get a job programming with Nim

It's not a mainstream language. See More

AwesomestLeto's Experience

Nim is a pretender, Mojo is the true contender. Mojo is a superset of Python, so can really transfer one's code over. With Mojo, no longer need C/C++, and defintely don't need preteners like Nim. Mojo developers work with and help the Python community, where Nim is just leeching off the name and popularity. It should have copied and leeched off Free/Object Pascal more, from which it actually came from. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, MacOS/iOS, Linux /Android/Termux, *BSD, Solaris/SmartOS, HaikuOS, lots of others

Current stable version:2.0.0

GZipped size:14,2 MB

Top Pro

Built-in Unicode support

You can use unicode names for variables, there is "unicode" module for operations with unicode. See More

Top Con

Community harsh if criticized

If one dares to start a discussion about a feature on Discord, subreddit or Github then one will be aggressively shut down. See More

Top Pro

Has built-in unittest module

With built-in "unittest" module you can create test with a very readable code. See More

Top Con

Atrocious error messages

Unhelpful to users, wasting hours deciphering and extremely annoying. See More

Top Pro

Great metaprogramming features

There are generics, templates, macros in Nim. They can allow you to write new DSL for your application, or avoid all boilerplate stuff. See More

Top Con

Memory management confusion

Multiple choices of garbage collection that causes confusion. Various times, nothing works particularly well. See More

Top Pro

Really cross-platform

The same code can be used for web, server, desktop and mobile. See More

Top Pro

Strict typing

Checks your code at compile time. See More

Top Pro

Multi paradigm

Imperative, OOP, functional programming in one language. See More

Top Pro

Supports UFCS (Unified Function Call Syntax)

writeLine(stdout, "hello") can be written as stdout.writeLine("hello") proc add(a: int): int = a + 5 can be used like 6.add.echo or 6.add().echo() See More

Top Pro

Easy to read

Nim has a lot of common with Python in terms of syntax. Indentation-based syntax, for/while loops. See More

Top Pro

Easy to integrate with another languages

You can use Nim with any language that can be interfaced with C. There's a tool which helps you to create new C and C++ bindings for Nim - c2nim. Also, you can use Nim with Objective C or even JavaScript (if you're compiling for these backends). See More

Top Pro

Compile-time execution

Nim has a built-in VM, which executes macros and some other code at compile time. For example, you can check if you're on Windows, and Nim will generate code only for it. See More

Top Pro

Garbage-collected

You don't need to deal with all those manual memory allocations, Nim can take care of it. But also you can use another GC, or tweak it for your real-time application or a game. See More

Top Pro

Has built-in async support

Nim has "asyncdispatch" module, which allows you to write async applications. See More

C

Top Pro

C is simple with lesser rules than any other language

C is standardized and it is the go-to language when you have to speed things up. See More

Specs

Current stable version:C'18

Typing discipline:static

Language type:imperative, ALGOL family

Standard:ISO/IEC 9899:2011/Cor 1:2012 or C11

Top Pro

Teaches good practices

Writing in C will require you to understand how things are done. C implies using and understanding the fundamentals. Learning a higher-level language after is much easier. See More

Top Pro

Understanding of computers

Learning C forces you to grapple with the low-level workings of your computer (memory management, pointers, etc.) in ways that the other languages abstract away. Without an understanding of these low-level aspects of computer programming you will be limited if you try to develop an application that needs to run in a memory or performance constrained environment. Other languages like Python can obscure a lot of details, so your foundation may be weaker. See More

Top Pro

Portable between CPU architectures

C was designed to be independent of any particular machine architecture, and so with a little care, it is easy to write "portable" programs (see here). By design, C provides constructs that map efficiently to typical machine instructions, and therefore it has found lasting use in applications that had formerly been coded in assembly language like operating systems or small embedded systems. See More

Top Pro

Helps with learning other languages later

A lot of languages used in the industry have a C-like syntax (C++, Java, Javascript, C#, PHP) and starting with C will help new developers to be familiar with it's syntax and by extensions with the syntax of many popular languages. See More

Top Pro

The king of languages, imitated, extended but never equalled

Made of a small set of keywords and rules, only your imagination is the limit. Above all, when it comes to 'pro' programming, C is the only one to rely on. See More

Top Pro

Portable

C is portable between most hardware. Generally a C compiler is made for any new architecture, and already exists for existing architectures. C is portable between all operating systems (Windows, UNIX, Mac, etc.) and only needs a program to be recompiled to work. This allows anyone on any operating system to learn about the language and not be held back by intricacies of their operating system. With this said, C's portability these days is not quite what it used to be. Much of said portability relies on the POSIX standard in particular, and as time passes, the compliance of a given system with that standard is becoming less certain; especially in the case of Linux. Most things will still be portable (or at least emulatable) between Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD for example; but you will at times need to make use of platform-specific support libraries and APIs as well. See More

Top Pro

Must-have

Capability to program in C is greatly appreciated in developers, creates an image of competency, and many programmers will learn it at some point in their careers. See More

Top Pro

Low level of abstraction

While higher level languages languages like Java and Python provide possibilities to be "more expressive" per line of code, it's much more convenient to start with "less efficient" (get me right) language, in order to get initial concepts of how things behave at lower level. Actually C is a good starting point moving to both higher and lower levels of abstraction, the good example here would be learning C before Assembler, as for general use the Assembler quite hard to understand due to low level of its abstraction (like getting the understanding on how loops work in C before trying to implement them on Assembler). See More

Top Pro

Foundational, difficult but important

Learning C will teach valuable skills and transferrable understanding of computing. While learning a scripting language may be easier, students will not understand system constraints and performance problems, nor what features like garbage collection are actually doing in other languages. See More

Top Pro

Easy to drop down to assembly

Sometimes you really need to program directly in assembly. C’s ABI and common compiler extensions make this a piece of cake. See More

Top Pro

Industry standard

C is the industry standard programming language, moreover, it is the most popular programming language to use. C is the language used for most Windows, UNIX and Mac operating systems. See More

Top Pro

More control over the code

Top Pro

Basic concepts can be applied to accelerate learning any other language

You can easily pivot knowledge learned here and apply it to almost every other language. See More

Top Pro

Low level langauge

Top Pro

Ubiquitous

There is a C compiler available for probably every computer system in existence today. See More

Top Pro

If you can't grok C you should not be a professional programmer

It sets an early bar that if you can't hurdle you might as well do something other than programming and not waste any more of your time. See More

Rust

Top Pro

Catch errors at compile-time

Since Rust is statically typed, you can catch multiple errors during compile time. This is extremely helpful with debugging, especially compared with dynamically typed languages that may fail silently during runtime. See More

Top Con

Low-level programming language

This means that it encourages the programmer to be very careful in terms of how memory is allocated, etc. Most applications can run without exceeding the capacity of the server, even with an inefficient dynamic scripting language. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, MacOS X, Windows, BSD

Current stable version:1.71.1

License:MIT/Apache

Top Pro

Compiles to machine code allowing for extra efficiency

Rust uses LLVM as a backend, among other things this allows Rust code to compile down to machine languages. This allows developers to write programs that run as efficiently as possible. See More

Top Pro

Support for macros

When you identify a part of your code which gets repeated often, which you cannot abstract using functions or classes, you can use Rust's built-in Macros. See More

Top Pro

Big community

The biggest community contributing to language. See More

Top Pro

Easy to write understandable code

While not as verbose as Java, it still is much more verbose than languages like Go and Python. This means that the code is very explicit and easy to understand. See More

Top Pro

Official package manager and build tool

Cargo is the official package manager for Rust. It comes with the language and downloads dependencies, compiles packages, and makes and uploads distributable packages See More

Top Pro

Threads without data races

Unique ownership system guarantees a mutable data to be owned and mutated by only one thread at a time, so there's no data race, and this guarantee is checked at compile time statically. Which means easy multi-threading. Of course, immutable data can be shared among multiple threads freely. See More

Top Pro

Supports cross compilation for different architectures

Since Rust 1.8 you can install additional versions of the standard library for different targets using rustup/multirust. For example: $ rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl Which then allows for: $ cargo build --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl See More

Top Pro

Makes developers write optimal code

Rust is a modern programming language written around systems. It was designed from the ground up this way. It's language design makes developers write optimal code almost all the time, meaning you don't have to fully know and understand the compiler's source code in order to optimize your program. Furthermore, Rust does not copy from memory unnecessarily, to give an example: all types move by default and not copy. Even references to types do not copy by default. In other words, setting a reference to another reference destroys the original one unless it's stated otherwise. See More

Top Pro

Generics support

You don't have to write same array and dictionary classes hundreds and thousands times for strong type check by compiler. See More

Top Pro

Built-in concurrency

Rust has built-in support for concurrency. See More

Top Pro

Functional programming

Very easy to create functional with some additional from structure application. See More

R

Top Pro

Has a wide range of options when it comes to IDEs/GUIs

Among the IDEs available there are several commercial applications as well as free and/or open-source ones, such as R Studio, which features syntax highlighting, project management capabilities, integrated terminal access, decent code completion and on-the-spot parameter hinting, graphical interfaces for package installation and such, and commendable extensibility/developer support. See More

Specs

Versioning:3.5.1

Top Pro

Pretty pictures

Top Pro

Lots of packages available

There are lots of different packages available that can be easily searched from the CRAN repo site and downloaded, or installed via the R command line interface. These packages are easy to include in a project or source file, and pertain to a wide variety of topics, from classification, social media analysis, and text processing to interactive 3d plotting and networks (including neural nets). See More

Wolfram Mathematica

Top Con

Not cheap

Top Pro

Lots of functionality

DignifiedAine's Experience

Mathematica has even exported of code for C, C++, Fortran, R. It is a rapid development environment for other languages. The number of lines of codes is considerably less for performing computations. More integrated features and functions. Knowlegde engine provides higher performance for everybody. See More

Top Con

Proprietary

Top Pro

Very mature

Wolfram Mathematica has been around for a long time without any major changes in the basic design. See More

Top Pro

Coherent API over different domains

Top Pro

Can use sigma notation to compute sum of array / sequence

Top Pro

Can use greek letters for variables

Top Pro

Programs look like a work of art

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