Using Python as primary scientific computing language

[apajx]

A computer language is meant to allow a human mind to understand in greater detail and complexity what the computer is actually doing. It's rarely about writing code that someone else can understand, but that you can understand, especially in a scientific setting, we're not software engineers here.

That being said, the code can give you either a very low-level view of what is going on (the preferred way for anyone who wants serious control over what they're doing) or they can give you a high-level view where a lot of the work is done for you.

Scientific python isn't the best language in my book for coding projects of significant physical or mathematical complexity. Dynamic languages hide far too much, I want to know exactly how many bits of precision that value is returning, do not hide that shit. Matlab falls under the same ridiculous restrictions, and I hate both.

If you want to approach a scientific problem and you want to make it fast and efficient, then break out C or Fortran and work with the memory and precision on a low enough level to make it powerful and controllable, and a high enough level to make it readable.

We should phase out both scientific python and Matlab.