{"id":35946,"date":"2021-01-19T18:38:03","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T17:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/multi.liora.io\/?p=35946"},"modified":"2026-08-08T12:23:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T11:23:42","slug":"python-or-r-which-to-choose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/python-or-r-which-to-choose","title":{"rendered":"Python or R: Two different languages for different uses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"what-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages\">What are the advantages and disadvantages ?<\/h2>\n\n\n<p><strong>First of all, there is no programming language better than another one. However, the fact that <strong>Python is more widely used<\/strong> in academia and therefore <strong>predominant later in industry<\/strong> is a considerable advantage if you want to train yourself in <a href=\"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/wp-admin\/post.php?post=35738&amp;action=edit\"><strong>Data Science<\/strong><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/machine-learning-what-is-it-and-why-does-it-change-the-world\"><strong>Machine Learning<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p>Depending on the field you work in, there are real differences between<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/python-the-most-popular-programming-language\"> Python<\/a><\/strong> and R.<\/p>\n\n\n<p>Lets see the different points that you need to know in order to choose the programming language which fits with your needs:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><strong>Machine Learning<\/strong>: It consists of two main steps: the model design and the prediction phase. The first one is <strong>done upstream by quite heavy calculations<\/strong> while the <strong>predictions are made in real time<\/strong>. Nevertheless, the choice of Python or R for each of these steps does not influence a user\u2019s execution time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><strong>Libraries<\/strong>: Both languages have a multitude of libraries adapted to Machine Learning. More than 5000 libraries are available in R in a wide variety of domains. <strong>Python has fewer but some are almost exhaustive<\/strong> such as Pandas, NumPy, Scikit Learn, SciPy or Matplotlib.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><strong>Development<\/strong>:\u00a0 Many people find <strong>Python quite easy to learn<\/strong>, as High-Level type it is closer to the human language, while <strong>R requires more effort to learn<\/strong> because of its rather unclear syntax. However, they both have good development environments such as <strong>Spyder<\/strong> for Python or <strong>Rstudio<\/strong> for R.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><strong>Speed<\/strong>: Initially, R and Python are two relatively slow languages. The emphasis on ease of programming in <strong>Python makes this language necessarily slower<\/strong> than low-level languages like R. In addition, <strong>R has recently updated its computationally intensive operating systems<\/strong> making it much faster. To make up for this delay, some Python libraries interface with the C language.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><strong>Visualization<\/strong>: In Data Science, <strong>data visualization<\/strong> is essential in order to analyze the results, so it is an important factor in choosing your language. Python is not to be complained about in this domain but the <strong><i>R ggplot2 package<\/i><\/strong> gives a big advantage over <strong>Python and its Matplotlib package <\/strong>for its diversity and ease of use.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p>Despite these pros and cons, the Liora training prefers Python for its ease of learning and its predominance in the professional world.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex is-content-justification-center wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-5ee10de4\" style=\"margin-top:32px;margin-bottom:32px\"><div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/courses\/data-ai\/data-analyst\">DiscoverLiora&#8217;s courses<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What are the advantages and disadvantages ? First of all, there is no programming language better than another one. However, the fact that Python is more widely used in academia and therefore predominant later in industry is a considerable advantage if you want to train yourself in Data Science and Machine Learning. Depending on the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":2030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2433],"class_list":["post-35946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-ai"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35946"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209779,"href":"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35946\/revisions\/209779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liora.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}