Re: [tlug] Fortran --> Python [and R] (was linux engineer)

[Nava Whiteford <new@example.com>]

> I also see a lot of movement in the scientific community to R (*). But
> it does depend on your type of science. R is being used where statistics
> is important. R is widely used in the economics and finance areas. And R
> appears to be *the* choice in biology and related sciences (but I'm not
> in those areas, so I may have that wrong).

It's used quite a lot in Biology, particularly for stats heavy stuff.
Perl and Python are more common though. There's a growing shift from Perl to Python.

> Until recently at least, R support for clusters was a bit weak, and that
> combined with the fact it is a high-level language mean people needing
> heavy-duty number crunching are still choosing Fortran.

There's a lot of legacy Fortran around too. That's mostly where I've seen people using it.
I think few PhD students these days would choose it as a language for a new project.

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