Re: Programming skills required by mathematicians?

On Jun 27, 6:59 am, Marshall <marshall.spi...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Jun 26, 8:35 pm, Phil Hobbs
>
>
>
> <pcdhSpamMeSensel...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > Marshall wrote:
> > > On Jun 26, 2:14 pm, Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSensel...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> > > wrote:
> > >> Frederick Williams wrote:
> > >>> Phil Hobbs wrote:
> > >>>> I agree that C++ is a good choice.
> > >>> You must be joking!
> > >> Why?  I taught myself C++, and have used it to build things like a
> > >> big-iron clusterized electromagnetic simulator.  The combination of
> > >> C-like performance with the ability to manage complexity that comes
with
> > >> OO programming is very flexible and powerful.
>
> > >> Or did I miss something ultra-im****tant?
>
> > > You did, actually: the existence of other languages that are better
> > > at those things.
>
> > So in other words, "No."
>
> If you are happy with where you are, and are not concerned
> about learning anything beyond what you already know,
> then by all means continue as you have been.
>
> If you are going to advise other people, then doing so from
> a place of ignorance is being less than fully responsible
>
> Marshall


This seems a little harsh. Games are all coded in C++ (albeit mostly
with a script wrapper layered on top), and I'd warrant they have the
majority of the top coders as their developers as well as the most
math going on, so there must be something going for c++ somewhere.

C++ is at the very least a good language to have under your belt, and
I find it surprising that anyone would think otherwise. Certainly it
has limitations - even with boost it lacks Java's library collection
and it can be decidedly idiosyncratic. However its low-level nature
can actually be a good step to learning whats going on under the hood
in general, and it is both powerful and widely sup****ted (and one
should not ignore the im****tance of sup****t to those just beginning).
Perhaps more than anything C++ templating functionality is unmatched
in imperative languages (with Java generics merely providing dynamic
casting), pu****ng forward techniques such as Alexandrescu's policy
based approach.

To be honest many top-notch Java coders I know are bailing from Java's
verbosity and clunkiness in favor of other languages with functional
features built upon the JVM (such as Scala say). I'd personally
recommend the OP get 101's in C++, Java, Python and Haskell and then
continue to learn whichever he finds a preference for. Lisp is worth
reading about for educational purposes in my book, and for a
mathematician list comprehension syntax in all languages is worth
investigating. I would also however echo your sentiments that the OP
should actively investigate non-imperative approaches.