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At 09:41 AM 12/7/2004 +1030, Chris Burrows wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Rex Couture [mailto:rex{([at]})nowhere.xy>> Sent: Tuesday, 7 December 2004 9:04 AM
>>
>> Even worse, you can do calculations with FORTRAN
>> that you may never be able to do with Oberon, CP, or any C derivative.
>>
>
>Are scientists really still using general-purpose computer languages for
>this sort of work? It made sense when I studied Physics back in the
>early 70's as there was no alternative apart from slide rules and
>logarithm tables. But now??? I thought that higher-level
>application-specific tools like Mathematica and MatLab were used for
>this purpose these days.
Mathematica and MatLab are big, but for examples of using general purpose languages like CP, you need look no further than CERN.
There is a lot of old code still doing a lot of useful calculations. Most of the code in my lab, for example, is older than 15 years. It would be an unacceptable burden to rewrite it to conform to evolving language standards.
The most reliable piece of software in the lab happens to be the first Pascal program I ever wrote. It's 1800 lines long and a little messy inside by my current standards, but it works flawlessly day and night, sometimes 24/7. Only two bugs have ever surfaced.
It's really an oddity why programs like MatLab and LabView exist. I find it a little strange to have a separate language for every application. These applications could have been collections of computer modules if only The Right Language had existed and been in widespread use at the time.
The unique capability I was referring to is automatic differentiation (
http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/autodiff/). Derivatives are notoriously difficult to compute numerically with accuracy, but a method has been found to avoid numerical approximations by operating directly on source code. It works only with ancient FORTRAN 77 and C (I incorrectly wrote that it was unavailable for C). This sort of project is only possible with very stable, standardized languages.
Sincerely,
Rex Couture, Ph. D.
Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Campus Box 1169
Washington University in St. Louis
1 Brookings Dr.
St. Louis MO 63130
Voice: (314) 935-4194
Fax: (314) 935-7361
rex{([at]})nowhere.xy
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Received on Tue Dec 07 2004 - 15:05:01 UTC