Python as a Declarative Programming Language (2017)
Python is often considered a slow programming language, particularly when compared to C or C++. However, its popularity in data analysis and machine learning remains high due to the efficiency of its libraries. By treating Python as a declarative language, developers can leverage its capabilities while minimizing performance drawbacks.
- ▪Python is approximately 40 times slower than C or C++ for typical programs.
- ▪Despite its speed limitations, Python is widely used in data analysis and machine learning.
- ▪Using Python as a declarative language allows for cleaner, faster code by minimizing control flow statements.
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Python as a Declarative Programming Language If you look at the programming languages benchmarks game, Python is one of the slowest commonly used programming languages out there. Typical programs written in pure Python average around 40 times slower than the equivalent program written in C or C++. Despite the performance penalty, Python is still probably the most popular language choice out there for doing Data Analysis and Machine Learning. Most of the recent Deep Learning frameworks target Python for development: TensorFlow, Theano, and Keras all use Python. Torch originally was written for Lua, which is substantially faster than Python when using LuaJIT - but Torch failed to gain traction until switching to Python with the release of PyTorch.
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