Ask Slashdot: Best Language To Learn For Scientific Computing?

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 17, 2013 @05:28AM from the english-then-chinese dept.

New submitter longhunt writes "I just started my second year of grad school and I am working on a project that involves a computationally intensive data mining problem. I initially coded all of my routines in VBA because it 'was there'. They work, but run way too slow. I need to port to a faster language. I have acquired an older Xeon-based server and would like to be able to make use of all four CPU cores. I can load it with either Windows (XP) or Linux and am relatively comfortable with both. I did a fair amount of C and Octave programming as an undergrad. I also messed around with Fortran77 and several flavors of BASIC. Unfortunately, I haven't done ANY programming in about 12 years, so it would almost be like starting from scratch. I need a language I can pick up in a few weeks so I can get back to my research. I am not a CS major, so I care more about the answer than the code itself. What language suggestions or tips can you give me?"

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BAD TIM! BAD! by girlintraining · 2013-10-17 05:37 · Score: 5, Funny

What language suggestions or tips can you give me?"
Timothy, shame on you. You should know better than to start a holy war.

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#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Re:Python by SJHillman · 2013-10-17 05:47 · Score: 5, Funny

VB is feeding your scrotum to a python.
Re:Python by Just+Some+Guy · 2013-10-17 09:25 · Score: 5, Funny

I wrote some Perl that looked like the output of AES once.

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Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?