Which language for Maths

I want to learn to write a program to do some simple maths calculations my best programming language is “basic” but I would prefer to utilise PHP - but I do not find it as intuitive.

The functions that will most necessarily be involved are the “if”; “what if”; “else”; “loops ” and “goto” functions

I would welcome recommendation from members as to which language would be best for me to learn at 70 years of age

Thank you

I would recommend Python.

the pro’s:

  • The context of the language looks similar to basic. You still dont have to use {} which can be very annoying if you never used them.
  • Its a very strong language for math and there are a lot of free to use library made for math and science stuff.
  • The community is huge.
  • There is a course for it right on this website. (Python course)

the con’s:

  • Python is very slow to compile. Therefor it is not advised to use it for creating games/websites or other stuff where visual is important.

As would I. From what I can recall, having not really done much with BASIC in a long while, BASIC was pretty easy to read and understand. Python places a lot of emphasis on keeping code readable, understandable, and simple wherever possible. :+1:

Python may not be your best bet for games, sure. (I’d probably look into Unity if that’s what you’re into.)

For websites, though, Python is perfectly fine - the Django framework is written in Python, and you create websites using Django through a combination of the usual suspects (HTML, CSS and JS) as well as Python.

It’s certainly not slow, as there are several “A-list” websites that are powered by Django - like, I believe, the Mozilla Organisation’s site, and Instagram.

Hmm… Maybe it’s just me than. I had some experience with some websites that tend to take long (at least 400ms) to reload a page. I don’t think those are based on Django tho so you are probably right.

Django isn’t the only option (flask comes to mind), but like with every tool it can be “abused”, a website can be written in PHP/go/nodeJS and still be very slow because the developer didn’t know what he was doing. Code can be written in assembly or C and still be slow if done incorrectly

its easy to blame the tool, although this is not always true

But we are getting off-topic (a little bit)

lets stick with that python is a very good candidate for what ozwaz requires.

Thank you for taking the trouble to give me advice

I will look into Python

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