On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Dimitri Pissarenko wrote:
> 4) Think about it from the economist's (not the technician's) point of
> view:
>
> *) best use of available resources (knowledge + already finished code)
> - learning LISP would incur additional costs, which are very high (if
> one includes the opportunity costs)
Learning lisp (or at least scheme) should be mandatory, and not just for
programmers.
There is the OmegaHat project <http://www.omegahat.org/>:
----------------------------------------------------------------
"The omegahat software falls into three related but distinct areas:
1. an interactive environment, including language(s) and other tools,
which in its current form can be used as a way of programming with Java
interactively and which we hope will grow to provide new approaches to
statistical computing;
2. Java packages implementing methods of interest in statistical
applications (e.g. modeling, graphics, and simulation), or providing tools
that support the interactive environment (e.g., databases, parsing, task
management);
3. inter-system interfaces, currently providing access to Java from
some existing statistical systems and support for distributed statistical
computing through the use of the CORBA standard."
-------------------------------------------------------
Omegahat came out of the R project which started with an Xlisp
interpreter, so the parallels are strong enough that you may find much of
your work is already done (or that you would do better to add whatever
symbolic capabilities you need to Omegahat -- if memory serves, R already
has some support for symbolic differentiation).
> *) amount of potential developers - there are certainly more Java
> gurus out there than there are LISP gurus
Not relevant for a project with a small audience -- it is possible that
97.5% of all gurus who would use your tool already use LISP.
> *) larger market share due to platform independence
Not if your project is tied to platforms that support the
required hooks to maxima. Not if your project is too big to
run on the majority of Java platforms (PDA's, etc.).
--
George N. White III <WhiteG@dfo-mpo.gc.ca> <gnw3@acm.org>
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