> I do not, however, think that the above problem is an
> argument for totally ignoring the Matlab model.
I agree entirely!
We should certainly benefit from the experience of Matlab, Octave,
Fortran 90, Mathematica, Maple, Lapack, APL/J, SPSS, Excel, SAS,
Minitab, S Plus, IMSL, commercial Macsyma, etc. etc.
However, it is unlikely that we can copy anything from them blindly,
except perhaps from commercial Macsyma and to a lesser extent
Mathematica/Maple, since their fundamental assumptions are very
different.
Does anyone know of a good survey of the syntax, semantics, and
pragmatics of these various systems? If not, perhaps I should undertake
one.
-s