🚀 go-pugleaf

Uncle Al <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote in message news:<3DB4524A.AE58D39@hate.spam.net>...
> Jon wrote:
> > 
> > nuberpaul@nandomail.com (Paul Nuber) wrote in message news:<46223b20.0210172119.334bb773@posting.google.com>...
> > > uncle Al wants it to work in windows, he may not have a fortran compiler.
> > 
> > g77 is available for windows, and is surprisingly good for the price.
> > 
> > > It is more easy with python.
> > 
> > The point was to provide something which a human with no in depth
> > knowledge of programming has a good chance of understanding. Since
> > fortran has been pretty stable since 1966, there's a better chance
> > that a mature scientist has at least seen it before. For the python
> > you posted, we needed to "import math", know about the range function,
> > have some notion of objects to handle the file and realise that the
> > line noise is a format statement. For the fortran you had to know to
> > how to compile (g77 myfile.f), execute and save the results (a.exe >
> > outputfile), and probably be aware of the implicit typing if you
> > wanted to change it. For both you needed some idea of a loop, either
> > "for" or "do" syntax. Both examples present their own problems for a
> > programming novice, so without wanting to start a religous war, I
> > don't understand why any one language is "more easy" than another. I
> > would be interested to seen an implementation using recursion instead
> > of loops, ideally in haskell, since I keep meaning to try and learn a
> > bit of it.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 
> > Jon
> > 
> > PS: Since fortran is usually at least 10 times faster than plain
> > python, I personally find that my development time for number
> > crunching applications is correspondingly reduced :)
> 
> Whoa!  No pissing contests!  The best code is the code that works.

Indeed no pissing contests but I cannot stop banging some words on here.
a. for a novice a non-compiling language is "more easy", he does not
   have to read through the pages of man page if his program does not
   compile
b. python is intuitive and easy to learn (read the tutorial, 0.5 days, and
   you can start programming)

don't get me wrong, I wrote tons of Fortran before convincing the
sonofafox to give me the degree.  Python is just like writing something
in awk, sed, csh : convenient.  It can also be very powerful too, 
rumor is that a good part of Google is powered by Python.  
My original intent: he might find it handy when he face similar
problems latter (e.g. if he wants to read a .cif file and repeat
10^4 times the unit cell, he can do it ALL in a python shell,
read the cif with a program which understand space group, spit
out a xyz file for a single cell, read the xyz file, 
repeat the unit cell, spit out the big chunk.
He might even want to program the socket and send
to his friend too!).

best
paul