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From: cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: He's not the only one at it again!
Message-ID: <2407@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 26 Jul 90 14:24:15 GMT
References: <388@e2big.mko.dec.com> <25630@cs.yale.edu> <2404@l.cc.purdue.edu> <1990Jul26.020229.2205@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Lines: 29

In article <1990Jul26.020229.2205@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, gsh7w@astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg S. Hennessy) writes:
> In article <2404@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
> #I claim I have made a strong case against ALGOL being even a good programming
> #language for mathematics. 
> 
> Because certain computers had hardware instructions that ALGOL could
> not use, then ALGOL is not a good programming language for
> mathematics. I don't understand the logic, because for ANY language,
> there will be machines that have instructions that cannot be used.

The early computer instruction sets were largely designed by mathematicians
to do mathematics.  These instructions were present on most of the computers,
for the good reason that mathematicians saw the need for them. 

For calculations whose accuracy is greater than that explicitly provided for
in the architecture, the job must be done in integer arithmetic, using
multi-word procedures.  I would be surprised if a mathematician even in
the 18th century would not have said this.  There are methods now which
could be used to modify this, and the advantage is still being disputed,
but even these benefit from a basic word x word to doubleword integer
operation, and doubleword integer/integer -> quotient,remainder.

So here we have these constructs, built into the hardware in the first place
because mathematicians saw the need for them, which a language intended to
be THE programming language for all of numerical mathematics left out!  
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)	{purdue,pur-ee}!l.cc!cik(UUCP)