The Bottom Line
Discover how to balance quick prototyping using languages like Python or MATLAB with implementing performance-critical code in C. Understand why C is essential for computationally intensive applications and learn the foundational approach to leverage both speed and efficiency in programming.
We'll cover the following...
A balancing act
Our approach is to use interpreted languages like Python, R, Octave/MATLAB, etc., for prototyping—that is, for exploring small amounts of data, for developing an approach, and algorithms, for analyzing data and generating graphics.
We consider implementing computationally heavy tasks, simulations, or time-consuming series of operations in C.
Using interpreted languages for prototyping and C for performance is a sweet spot that helps balance the development speed with the performance.
On the practical side, the nature of C makes it optimal for many processing-based applications:
That’s it for our introduction to this language. Let’s get started!