Skip to content

Use the best tool for the job

No program is the best at everything!

  • Stata: Easy to use, but can be slow in places.

  • C: Extremely fast (e.g. underpins gtools) but hard to learn.

  • Mata: Stata's embedded matrix language, can be used to speed-up many simple tasks. Before even dreaming of learning something like C, you should look into mata if you're using Stata!

  • Frames: Available from Stata 16, allows the user to have multiple datasets in memory.

  • Python: Built-in interface from Stata 16; allows direct interaction with Python.