Subj : Re: Four Programming Questions
To   : comp.programming
From : Jon Harrop
Date : Tue Jul 12 2005 09:35 pm

Jonathan Bartlett wrote:
>  > Question Two: Which language is best for scientific programming?
> 
> Fortran is still popular.  I like Scheme.  Some people are trying to
> resurrect Sisal.  R is good for statistics.  Octave is good for
> numerical calculation.  Mathematica, Maxima, and others are good for
> symbolics.

Actually, I use Mathematica primarily because it is the simplest way to
generate great-looking graphics. I wrote most of my PhD in Mathematica, to
the point that I could regenerate most of the computations and graphics and
embed them in my thesis at the click of a mouse.

That turned out to have been a good idea when I found a bug 2 weeks before
submission - within 24hrs my thesis had been corrected (except for some
conclusions ;-).

For anyone who's interested, my PhD thesis (on wavelets and time-frequency
analysis) is here:

  http://www.chem.pwf.cam.ac.uk/~jdh30/papers/thesis.pdf

I've since made the code into a Mathematica add-on package:

  http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/CWT/

I've also written a mini Mathematica interpreter (800 LOC) and JIT compiler
(2kLOC) in OCaml and Mathematica maths and graphics importing and rendering
via OpenGL for Presenta:

  http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/presenta/

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
http://www.ffconsultancy.com

.