So I’ve recently discovered that using Python to analyse data is, to me, like talking in Hindi. Let me explain.
Back in 2008-9 I lived in Delhi, where the only language spoken was Hindi. Now, while I’ve learnt Hindi formally in school (I got 90 out of 100 in my 10th boards!), and watched plenty of Hindi movies, I’ve never been particularly fluent in the language.
The basic problem is that I don’t know the language well enough to think in it. So when I’m talking Hindi, I usually think in Kannada and then translate my thoughts. This means my speech is slow – even Atal Behari Vajpayee can speak Hindi faster than me.
More importantly, thinking in Kannada and translating means that I can get several idioms wrong (can’t think of particular examples now). And I end up using the language in ways that native speakers don’t (again can’t think of examples here).
I recently realised it’s the same with programming languages. For some 7 years now I’ve mostly used R for data analysis, and have grown super comfortable with it. However, at work nowadays I’m required to use Python for my analysis, to ensure consistency with the rest of the firm.
While I’ve grown reasonably comfortable with using Python over the last few months, I realise that I have the same Hindi problem. I simply can’t think in Python. Any analysis I need to do, I think about it in R terms, and then mentally translate the code before performing it in Python.
This results in several inefficiencies. Firstly, the two languages are constructed differently and optimised for different things. When I think in one language and mentally translate the code to the other, I’m exploiting the efficiencies of the thinking language rather than the efficiencies of the coding language.
Then, the translation process itself can be ugly. What might be one line of code in R can sometimes take 15 lines in Python (and vice versa). So I end up writing insanely verbose code that is hard to read.
Such code also looks ugly – a “native user” of the language finds it rather funnily written, and will find it hard to read.
A decade ago, after a year of struggling in Delhi, I packed my bags and moved back to Bangalore, where I could both think and speak in Kannada. Wonder what this implies in a programming context!