generating C or Java, was: Why is *print-circle* set to T by default? WAS: grinding, etc.
Subject: generating C or Java, was: Why is *print-circle* set to T by default? WAS: grinding, etc.
From: Michel Talon
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 11:06:05 +0100
Robert Dodier wrote:
>
> But, um, if it solves the problem immediately, then it solves the problem
> ... in what sense is it lacking?
>
It is not lacking at all, it is in fact so direct and simple that it should
indeed be integrated in maxima, because a command to output C code should be
appreciated by many people. Anyways i thank you very much, Robert, and i
also thank Stavros Macrakis for his (quite sophisticated for me) solution to
the same problem, and prof. Richard Fateman for his alternative route to the
solution. This, combined with fortra.lisp, f90.lisp, shows that there are
"many ways to skin a cat"
I have read some of Fateman's papers on multiprecision computations with
lisp and co. so i see that it is one of his subjects of interest. By the
way, for reference, here are the URLS for the necessary software he is
speaking about:
http://www.mpfr.org/http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/generic/mpfr.lisphttp://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/generic/ga.lisp
>From my experience speaking with colleagues, there is very little hope
people in the physics community may be attracted by lisp programming, if
only because the language is far too gigantic, nobody wants to learn several
hundred pages (*) of stuff. Python has gained a lot of momentum in the same
community because you learn it very fast, still it is not that different
from lisp. All this to say that the solution he advocates may have practical
use probably only if combined with a wrapper which hides it behind simple
maxima commands. (*) same punishment for C++, but more generally, as
coauthor of a big book on my subject, i know that big books are always a
failure, nobody reads them, and it is even difficult to find information
inside - either the index is too small and lacks half the interesting words,
or too big, the relevant page is hidden among myriads irrelevant ones.
--
Michel Talon