From: mbk@lyapunov.ucsd.edu (Matt Kennel)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Small Language Wanted
Date: 21 Aug 92 20:49:22 GMT
Organization: Institute For Nonlinear Science, UCSD
NNTP-Posting-Host: lyapunov.ucsd.edu
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mikc@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Mike Coughlin) writes:
: In article <41910@skye.dcs.ed.ac.uk> gvw@epcc.ed.ac.uk (Greg Wilson) writes:
: >  I regularly lambast physicists for using "old" languages like Fortran,
: >  so I feel I should set a good example for students by using some
: >  modern ideas myself)
:   As a user of Fortran, I must protest the idea that Fortran is an 
: old language. Since structured programming concepts were introduced
: into Fortran many years ago, there are no "modern" programming ideas
: that are need in Fortran to accomplish its purpose of scientific
: and mathematical computation.

I disagree.  There are some "modern" programming ideas that are necessary
for scientific and mathematical computation, such as all the various types
of 'tree data structures' and such things requiring dynamically allocated
objects and some sort of pointer notion,

: The mathematical notation used by 
: physicists is an old language and they don't have much interest in
: changing it.

and even worse, there are alot of useful mathematical notions that should be
in a mathematical programming language that have been defined away as
uninteresting by the "modern" computer science community.  The surging
importance of parallel computing (for which the primary users are
scientists) might perhaps reverse the trend, but I'm not confident.

Examples:

1)  One that I'd appreciate (this has been hashed over many times) is
    array index notation.  A(i,j) = B(i,k)*C(k,j).  I do NOT think that
    matrix and vector computations are best done by "overloading operators"
    with a "class library".

2)  Mathematicians (like the infamous Prof. Rubin) would probably enjoy
    fast multiprecision arithmetic, though this wouldn't be as useful for 
    scientists.

I'm sure that there are other examples, that I can't quite think of
right now.

Notation for expressing standard mathematical computations
(I'm not talking about logic or set theory or other esoterica like that)
hasn't been substantially improved since original Fortran.

: So why should they want to switch from Fortran? Perhaps
: if other computing languages included things like exponential operations
: ( ** ), and complex number arithmetic there would be more reason to use
: something besides Fortran.

Agreed.  It's unconscionable to make things *worse* than 1959 Fortran.

:   The best new idea that physicists (and every other programmer) should
: use is extensive commenting so human beings can read source listings.

I think it's the clarity of thought that makes the real difference.

: That would be the greatest advance since digital computers were invented.
:    Of course if you want a language that can be modified to include any
: new idea that you want to try, Forth is a very good choice. And I've
: heard that Lisp and Scheme are good for that too.

--
-Matt Kennel  		mbk@inls1.ucsd.edu
-Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California, San Diego
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