Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 01:25:28 -0400 From: "Thomas M. Sommers" <tms2@mail.ptd.net> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: cjclark@alum.mit.edu, "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@nwlink.com>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Language for Modeling Mechanical System Message-ID: <397FC7C8.D1C7BBD9@mail.ptd.net> References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.1000725232454.25887B-100000@utah> <Pine.SOL.3.96.1000725232454.25887B-100000@utah> <4.3.2.7.2.20000726195620.04ab6ee0@localhost>
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Brett Glass wrote: > > At 12:44 AM 7/26/2000, Crist J. Clark wrote: > > >> I figure there just has to be something out there that does mathematical > >> modeling. I just haven't found it yet. > > > >It's what FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation) was made for. > > No; despite the name, FORTRAN is very much a general-purpose computing > language. It has only one possible advantage in a mathematical > modeling setting: because of its long use in scientific and engineering > work, FORTRAN compilers traditionally perform extensive optmization on > floating point calculations. The strength reduction, expression > rearrangement, loop unrolling, and parallelization facilities in a > good FORTRAN compiler are second to none. However, with today's fast > PCs, these optimizations aren't necessary unless you're doing VERY > complex modeling -- stuff like fluid dynamics. And since FORTRAN is > rather primitive, you'll spend a lot more time coding than you would > if you had a better tool for this particular task. It also has a builtin complex type, and common math operations such as exponentiation and trig functions are also builtin, and so don't incur function call overhead. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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