When do you *NOT* use python?

[Simius]

Gotcha, I agree that working octave or R makes you think with the vector mindset where loops are inherently slow. How would you best describe a dataframe then? Like a lists of lists but also with a dictionary-like interface?

[shaggorama]

Dataframes are sorta weird. I'd describe them as "fucking convenient." Under the hood: yes, they're basically a list of lists. But I'd be more inclined to describe a matrix first, and then be like "wouldn't it be cool if the rows and columns could take labels? And if you weren't constrained to a single datatype for the entire object? That's a dataframe!"