Best Programming Language for Data Science [closed]

Question

I'm learning JS, HTML and CSS, but I doubt JS is very good at Data Analysis. So, what would you guys recommend me learning to start my "career" in Data Science? What's the best programming language for processing data? P.S. I love statistics and programming so I think this will be fun.

Answer 1

This is no doubt a duplicate, but here's how I'd weigh in on the major languages:

R:

1. Fantastic support for packages and specialised stats analysis community, you can find a package to do just about anything you need and it will be relatively easy to use.
2. Is good for throwing together prototypes and performing exploratory analysis.
3. Is Free and Open Source.
4. Slower than Python. Basically don't loop over anything. It's an odd language for a programmer to use (coming from a software dev background). Clearly designed by mathematicians.
5. Relatively little choice of good IDEs

Python:

1. Fast.
2. Also very good as a general purpose language so has 'broader' package support. Free and Open Source.
3. Easy to use for Big Data applications.
4. Not as streamlined for analysis as R.
5. Syntax can be difficult to read (no surrounding braces to make it obvious where functions/ if statements end).
6. Can be particularly tedious working with Dataframes compared to R.

MATLAB:

1. Generally slower.
2. Has very impressive packages for signal processing/image recognition and all the cool stuff.
3. Is very readable and easy to comprehend generally.
4. Is NOT free. Student licenses are available. Was quite complicated for me to get my hands on one though...
5. Has very good support for mathematical analysis similar to R, but much better matrix functions.

Personal recommendation: Python. Kill two birds with one stone, learn good general to advanced programming concepts and data science at the same time.

Good article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/r-vs-python-matlab-octave-julia-who-winner-siva-prasad-katru

Answer 2

Python is a great choice if u are from programming developer
This article will be good if u want more details
http://www.kdnuggets.com/2015/05/r-vs-python-data-science.html
Also u've mentioned to recommend u to start your career in data science.I think Kaggle.com will be the best choice for the beginners.It will help u to know whether this field suits u or not.
And for blog i think kdnuggets.comwill be a good choice.
Hope this answer is helpful..