🚀 go-pugleaf

> On 13 Dec 90 08:49:16 GMT, prentice@hydra.unm.edu (john@unmfys.unm.edu) said:

John> In article <PCG.90Dec12181318@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk> pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk 
(Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
>....Still, of my 2 alternative to Fortran, one, C++, is kind of
>the ultimate in notational convenience; like Fortran [89]0, user defined
>types, operators, ... Now that I think of it I think that one of the
>very best languages for numerical analysis, with some of the very best
>implementations, is Algol 68. Too bad it has almost faded away.

John> Whatever did happen to Algol?  You see alot of the old ACM
John> algorithms programmed in it and it looked rather interesting.

What we obviously need is GNU-Algol-68, maybe shorted to gnugol, or
even just gol.  Any volunteers for the implementation?
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> ... (after a discussion of Scheme) ...
>Scheme is one of the most widely implemented languages, running on all
>of the popular architectures, is well defined by a clear and concise
>report, ...

John> I will look up the reference you gave on Scheme.  Sounds like
John> something I should at least know about.

While you are looking at Scheme, you should probably also look at T.
T is a variant of Scheme for object-oriented LISP-looking programming
which was developed at Yale.  I have read the report, but have not yet
had any time to play with the language....
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John> I appreciate the support!  By the way, you are right that my
John> discussion about the lack of academic respectability (good way
John> to put it) of computational physics is not really a subject for
John> this group, but it IS in a way, in the sense that so much of the
John> recent flame war between C and Fortran (which I certainly have
John> done my part to fan) is fueled by the problems that
John> computational scientists face in having to balance understanding
John> of their principal discipline with an understanding of
John> computers.

The same problems exist in my field (ocean modelling), but are
probably even more acute.  John probably gets in trouble by being
called a "computer hacker", while I get in trouble by being called a
"mathemetician" just because I pay too much attention to getting the
right answer from the mathematics that goes into the computer models!
After all, the only thing that matters is getting pretty pictures, right?

On the "respectability" subject, I was at the Supercomputer
Computations Research Institute at Florida State a few years back when
they tried to get together degree program in "computational science".
The plan eventually failed.  From my limited exposure to the actual
politiking, it seems that it failed because:

(1) The narrow view of "computational science" looked like it was
    simply a specialization within the applied math department.

(2) The broad view of "computational science" was seen to be too large
    to fit into a reasonable Ph.D. program.

(3) None of the existing departments wanted to risk giving up any of
    their current or prospective graduate students to yet another
    competing department.
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--
John D. McCalpin			mccalpin@perelandra.cms.udel.edu
Assistant Professor			mccalpin@brahms.udel.edu
College of Marine Studies, U. Del.	J.MCCALPIN/OMNET