Overview
Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 0 min
Exercises: 0 min
Questions
- Why is one programming language often not enough?
- Motivate why it can be beneficial to combine scripted and compiled languages.
Why is one programming language often not enough?
| Python | C | C++ | Fortran | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pros | prototyping | fast | low-level to high-level expressiveness | math |
| readability | portable | data structures | speed | |
| libraries | ||||
| Cons | speed | low-level | complexity | lack of containers |
| type system | explicit memory management | lots of boilerplate code | strings | |
| input parsing |
Some cons are sometimes pros. This is not a flame-war. The point here is that different languages have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Motivation for this tutorial
- Each language has strengths and weaknesses, combine the strengths.
- To speed up Python code: move the bottleneck outside of Python.
- To simplify compiled code: express code that is not efficiency-critical in Python.
- To combine libraries or legacy code written in different languages: sometimes others have chosen the language.
- To unit test compiled code with Python: simple and you can write tests without recompiling the code.
- To package compiled code with Python: PyPI is awesome.
Can you think of more reasons?
In this tutorial we will discuss and present how to glue different languages together - buckle up!
Key points
Use the right tool for the right task and leverage tools.