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Yes, it is in fact so "simple" that you have to bang it on the head and shout at it to get it to actually do anything. For the audience of this article, a good
by squidfood 15y ago
Yes, it is in fact so "simple" that you have to bang it on the head and shout at it to get it to actually do anything.
For the audience of this article, a good test is to compare a copy of Numerical Recipes in c versus the fortran edition, where the whole purpose of the book is to present numerical code to scientists. c (and c++) have to spend ages developing up notation and workarounds for the simplest matrix to correct c's deficiencies; the pointer manipulations (array pointers, function pointers, pointer pointers) make the code nigh-unreadable compared to the straightforward and understandable fortran.
Edit: I agree with your point with respect to interpreted languages, especially those with weak typing; I don't need to control where my number lives in memory, but I do need to control the bits of precision from the beginning.
- danieldk 15y agoYour definition of unreadable must then differ from mine: http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/QuickRefPage.html http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/QuickRefPage.html
- archgoon 15y agoAnd working code breaks when moving to new computers or upgrading the operating system, meaning you have to dive into the template library to figure out how the array alignment is working, and how Mac OS X function calls affect the stack. Been there. Not pleasant.
- danieldk 15y agoWell, arguably, Apple upgraded Xcode, sorry your favorite interpreter/compiler broke, is even less fun.
- derleth 15y ago> interpreted languages, especially those with weak typing Dynamic and weak are not the same thing. Weak typing means you're allowed to break abstractions; C has weak typing, C++ is marginally less weak, and Python has strong typing for its built-in types.