Re: Programming skills required by mathematicians?

On Jun 26, 12:49 pm, Frederick Williams
<frederick.willia...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Phil Hobbs wrote:
>
> > I agree that C++ is a good choice.
>
> You must be joking!
>
> > To the list of suggested books,
>
> If books are being suggested, then I would recommend two programming
> books: Meyer's _Object-Oriented Software Construction_ and Ableson and
> Sussman's _Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

Ah, now we are talking.  Without wanting to start a flame war, do
consider Lisp.  It is interactive and very efficient for software
development, has excellent compilers, numerical facilities and
incor****ates many programming paradigms.  In Common Lisp you have
CLOS, the most advanced OO-system.  Its notation takes getting used to
for some, but once you got it, it is exceptionally clear and shows the
usefulness of program-data equivalence.  Lisp is truly extensible, it
does not grow old and any expression ever written in it is still
readable.

Ernst van Waning


PS Perhaps some quotes may be helpful?

"Lisp has jokingly been called 'the most intelligent way to misuse a
computer'.  I think that description is a great compliment because it
transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of
our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible
thoughts."

- Edsger W. Dijkstra, CACM, 15:10



"the greatest single programming language ever designed"

- Alan Kay, on Lisp



"Please don't assume Lisp is only useful for Animation and Graphics,
AI, Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce, Data Mining, EDA/Semiconductor
applications, Expert Systems, Finance, Intelligent Agents, Knowledge
Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling and Simulation, Natural Language,
Optimization, Research, Risk Analysis, Scheduling, Telecom, and Web
Authoring just because these are the only things they happened to
list."

- Kent M. Pitman