# "Python is undoubtedly faster in helping programmers express their concept in fewer lines of code"

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/python-is-undoubtedly-faster-in-helping-programmers-express-their-concept-in-fewer-lines-of-code/45872>\
**Category:** Offtopic\
**Created:** [September 1, 2020, 1:21am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/python-is-undoubtedly-faster-in-helping-programmers-express-their-concept-in-fewer-lines-of-code/45872 "2020-09-01T01:21:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![johnh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/johnh/32/3615_2.png) [@johnh](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/johnh)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2020, 1:24pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/python-is-undoubtedly-faster-in-helping-programmers-express-their-concept-in-fewer-lines-of-code/45872/22 "2020-09-03T13:24:36Z")

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I am still waiting for someone to design a language where [various forms of whitespace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_character) have different meaning.

Perl [Acme::Bleach - For really clean programs - metacpan.org](https://metacpan.org/pod/Acme::Bleach)

ps. I believe fun like this and ‘obfuscated Perl’ contests did the Perl language no good at all.

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**Author:** ![chakravala](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/chakravala/32/6832_2.png) [@chakravala](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/chakravala)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2020, 1:44pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/python-is-undoubtedly-faster-in-helping-programmers-express-their-concept-in-fewer-lines-of-code/45872/23 "2020-09-03T13:44:00Z")

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> [@Tamas\_Papp](#):
>
> should utilized for some crucial piece of syntactic distinction as it is _both_ tricky to input _and_ invisible in a lot of IDEs.

I will be honest, I actually used `\Upsilon` instead of `Y` in one of my code and they look exactly the same. Actually, I used both of them that time, and only I know which of the two chatacters is intended for what.

But this is a piece of code nobody cares about, so nobody has ever noticed that I did this.

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**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2020, 1:49pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/python-is-undoubtedly-faster-in-helping-programmers-express-their-concept-in-fewer-lines-of-code/45872/24 "2020-09-03T13:49:34Z")

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> [@GunnarFarneback](#):
>
> Why would you think nobody has done this yet?

Just to clarify, the exercise I am proposing is creating a programming language which has nearly sane syntax, _then_ making whitespace significant in some obscure way.

Julia chickened out very early with some minor whitespace corner cases in the parser. Python looks promising, but it is actually reasonably consistent.

> [@chakravala](#):
>
> actually used `\Upsilon` instead of `Y` in one of my code and they look exactly the same

That’s more like it!

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**Author:** ![DNF](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/dnf/32/10191_2.png) [@DNF](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/DNF)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2020, 2:16pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/python-is-undoubtedly-faster-in-helping-programmers-express-their-concept-in-fewer-lines-of-code/45872/25 "2020-09-03T14:16:09Z")

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> [@Tamas\_Papp](#):
>
> Just to clarify, the exercise I am proposing is creating a programming language which has nearly sane syntax, _then_ making whitespace significant in some obscure way.

Ah, so you’re not jumping ship, then?

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**Author:** ![GunnarFarneback](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/gunnarfarneback/32/1827_2.png) [@GunnarFarneback](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/GunnarFarneback)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2020, 2:25pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/python-is-undoubtedly-faster-in-helping-programmers-express-their-concept-in-fewer-lines-of-code/45872/26 "2020-09-03T14:25:22Z")

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> [@Tamas\_Papp](#):
>
> Just to clarify, the exercise I am proposing is creating a programming language which has nearly sane syntax, _then_ making whitespace significant in some obscure way.

It might be arguable whether it’s a programming language but `make` is infamous for its significant tabs.

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**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2020, 7:54am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/python-is-undoubtedly-faster-in-helping-programmers-express-their-concept-in-fewer-lines-of-code/45872/28 "2020-09-04T07:54:24Z")

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> [@DNF](#):
>
> Ah, so you’re not jumping ship, then?

Nay. Just want people who care about whitespace to enjoy themselves. 😉

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**Author:** ![spaceLem](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/spacelem/32/217628_2.png) [@spaceLem](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/spaceLem)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2020, 11:41am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/python-is-undoubtedly-faster-in-helping-programmers-express-their-concept-in-fewer-lines-of-code/45872/29 "2020-09-04T11:41:04Z")

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I’m also a mathematical epidemiologist. I moved over from C++/Octave (why didn’t I use R?!) after a colleague (an economist / epidemiologist) suggested it. As soon as I tried it I found it was lovely to work with and the repl + good performance meant I could proceed at a far faster pace than with C++, even if at the time I was getting only about 1/5th the C++ performance in my models.

I haven’t come across any other language where it’s as easy to express the logic as in Julia. It’s no wonder that it’s gained quite some popularity at our department who are otherwise mostly R or Java users.

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**Author:** ![SamBrand](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@SamBrand](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/SamBrand)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2020, 12:48pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/python-is-undoubtedly-faster-in-helping-programmers-express-their-concept-in-fewer-lines-of-code/45872/30 "2020-09-04T12:48:30Z")

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Yeah, thats very similar to my department. C++ / R / MATLAB have been mainstays, with Julia (rapidly) increasing in popularity.

Python is a quite marginal language amongst maths epi people that I’ve met, although I don’t make any claim that this is universal. But the wide-spread claims about Python being incredibly expressive haven’t seemed to penetrate epi modelling in the same way as it has other fields.

I think the success of Julia in epi modelling is mainly down to DifferentialEquations.jl.

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