Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!yale!venus!tang
From: tang@venus.ycc.yale.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re : Fortran vs. C for numerical work
Message-ID: <655.27566753@venus.ycc.yale.edu>
Date: 30 Nov 90 19:06:11 GMT
Organization: Yale Computer Center (YCC)
Lines: 24

tmb@bambleweenie57.ai.mit.edu writes:

>Not surprisingly--anything else is very cumbersome to express in
>FORTRAN--and if FORTRAN is all a scientific programmer is familiar
>with, he'll easily dismiss good algorithms as "too complicated" that
>are naturally and simply expressed using highly linked data
>structures, closures, lists, etc. To add to the insult, computer
>manufacturers like Cray have built whole machines based on the idea
>that all people want to do is loop sequentially through arrays.
>
>Hopefully, once scientific programmers switch to more expressive
>programming languages (like FORTRAN 9x, C, C++, Modula-3, Scheme, ML,
>Haskell), scientific programming will be liberated from such limited
>paradigms. Arrays and loops are very important, but the are not a
>panacea.

While I agree that efficient code and well-written code are two different 
things, I find it hard to agree that the bulk of scientific and numerical
computation require substantially more than looping.  Unless one dismisses
the importance of Taylor series or Fourier series in science, it is obvious
that series and linear algebra are tightly related to loops, and hence, the
importance of loops in scientific computation.  

Tang


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