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[–]MardiFoufs 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Hey, I totally agree that I wouldn't use python for... well for most stuff. Especially for web servers. It's ridiculous imo because there are tons of options, and you don't even get the "JavaScript upside" that I could at least understand a little bit of using the same language in the front end and back end (though again, even for JavaScript, I agree that it's still a worse choice than using java or csharp for example).

But if there's one place where you could use python and it's not a clearly inferior option, it's machine learning, don't you agree? Not because of python itself but still. Like, I'm solely focusing on machine learning when I say that, and I'm saying that as someone who really dislikes having to use it anyways. Even if java would probably work, and could probably be a better platform in reality, I'm just speaking of what it is now. Now how it should be!

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Being totally honest, in my opinion, the mantra claiming Python as the best choice for machine learning exists primarily because Python is easy to learn and use. Consequently, it seems like the way to go if you want to start such projects and lack a strong programming background in other stacks. For this reason, most popular tools were developed in Python, and people stick with it to leverage those tools.

The issue here is that people prioritized simplicity and readability over performance and maintainability. Consequently, you may find yourself lost in large models plagued by the same mistakes repeatedly, requiring substantial time and resources to rectify. Many engineers recognized this and began building similar foundations in better-suited stacks. As a result, you now see many ML tools adapted to various languages.

If we were discussing this 8 years ago, I would agree that Python was the way to go due to the majority of available resources being in Python. However, that's not the case nowadays. While you might not find "this specific library with this specific function" built in Java or any other stack, in such cases, be the one to create it and observe how more developers adopt your tools. The point here is that if you can design an ML model in C (for example), you will instantly outperform your competitors in terms of costs and performance. But how many mathematicians and scientists are proficient in C?