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Re: Mathematica and Lisp
Posted:
Jan 26, 2013 1:37 AM
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On Jan 25, 2013, at 1:34 AM, Richard Fateman <fateman@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> ...
> I think that perfection depends on the context. Though they are
> not my areas of primary interest, I suspect the Mathematica is pretty
> good for some kinds of graphics (though I find it clumsy sometimes,
> that is probably my unfamiliarity with the nuances of Graphics objects),
> and maybe linear cellular automata.
> There seems to be a fairly strong consensus that for numerical
> programming there are other competitors favored in engineering schools.
At least some of that "fairly strong consensus" may be ill-founded today, after Mathematica's numerical methods have evolved.
Typically I encounter engineers and scientists who assure me that M****b is oh so much better than Mathematica, yet they have never actually tried Mathematica in a serious way or looked into efficiency comparisons. They were raised on M****b and so they're convinced it's the be-all and end-all for numerical work, and how dare anybody try to tell them otherwise -- any evidence to the contrary be damned.
While one can compile certain functions within Mathematica, of course it's difficult for any interpreted language to compete for running efficiency with a compiled language.
---
Murray Eisenberg murray@math.umass.edu
Mathematics & Statistics Dept.
Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H)
University of Massachusetts 413 545-2838 (W)
710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801
Amherst, MA 01003-9305
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