* Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) @ 1999-04-23 0:00 Hans N. Beck 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Gautier ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 19+ messages in thread From: Hans N. Beck @ 1999-04-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Hi, does anyone has experiences with Ada and numerical applications ? Does Ada fit for this ? It's not only a question of types available, but also of efficiency (speed) of the compilers. Yeeeees I know, in the most cases Fortran is used, but perhaps anyone walks on new fields ? Thanks ! Hans -- Dipl.-Ing. Hans N. Beck -------------------------------------------- Technischer + didaktischer Computereinsatz -------------------------------------------- Waldstr. 28, D-75045 Walzbachtal \ Tel: +49 (0)7203 922280 / \ Fax: +49 (0)7203 922281 / \ Handy: 0177 5383233 / eMail: hnbeck@t-online.de ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-23 0:00 Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) Hans N. Beck @ 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Gautier 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Gautier 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Joachim Schroeer 2 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread From: Gautier @ 1999-04-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Hans N. Beck > does anyone has experiences with Ada and numerical > applications ? Yes, me ;-) > Does Ada fit for this ? Yes. > It's not only a question of types > available, but also > of efficiency (speed) of the compilers. Yeeeees I know, in > the most cases Fortran > is used, but perhaps anyone walks on new fields ? * Speed: same between DEC Fortran & DEC Ada, Lahey Fortran and GNAT/DOS for simple things. (pragma suppress_all -> =Fortran; else -> slower for debugging). For big programs Ada is faster with a smart usage of cross-package inlining (available with GNAT) and subtyping. * Coding time, debugging time, human energy: you _can_ forget Fortran! There are plenty of numerics resources there: http://amok.ast.univie.ac.at/~stift/stift_home.html For finite elements, sparse matrices, etc. contact me for some sources. -- Gautier -------- http://members.xoom.com/gdemont/ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Gautier @ 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Gautier 0 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread From: Gautier @ 1999-04-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) > * Coding time, debugging time, human energy: you _can_ forget Fortran! Preventive warning: I didn't write you _must_ forget Fortran - in case people mixing religion and programming read it... Just personal + collected around experiences! -- Gautier -------- http://members.xoom.com/gdemont/ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-23 0:00 Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) Hans N. Beck 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Gautier @ 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn 1999-04-24 0:00 ` bglbv 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Joachim Schroeer 2 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread From: Markus Kuhn @ 1999-04-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <372083A1.45A5EB97@t-online.de>, HNBeck@t-online.de (Hans N. Beck) writes: |> does anyone has experiences with Ada and numerical |> applications ? Have you seen http://amok.ast.univie.ac.at/~stift/stift_home.html which is a web page that propagates the use of Ada95 in astrophysics number crunching. |> Does Ada fit for this? It think it does! You have all the types available (including complex), you have a better exception handling than in Fortran, and with tasks, you have a powerful construct for using parallel processors. Ada is certainly much better suited than C, which thanks to the array/pointer duality prevents many of the strong optimizations that number-crunching applications need on modern RISK architectures. C implicitely assumes that arrays have to be stored always in RAM (as opposed to registers), while compilers can handle non-aliased Ada arrays much more flexible. (I actually wonder, whether GNAT 3.11p does produce more efficient code for non-aliased arrays than the corresponding C code, or whether GNAT limits itself to the optimization capabilities of gcc.) |> It's not only a question of types available, but also |> of efficiency (speed) of the compilers. You get Ada compilers today that are quite comparable in efficiency with C compilers. On more exotic architectures such as super computers, you might not find the same level of optimization yet as it is available for Fortran 77 compilers. It depends a lot on the architecture. Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn @ 1999-04-24 0:00 ` bglbv 1999-04-25 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner 0 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread From: bglbv @ 1999-04-24 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) mgk25@cl.cam.ac.uk (Markus Kuhn) writes: > In article <372083A1.45A5EB97@t-online.de>, HNBeck@t-online.de (Hans N. Beck) writes: > |> does anyone has experiences with Ada and numerical > |> applications ? > > Have you seen > > http://amok.ast.univie.ac.at/~stift/stift_home.html > > which is a web page that propagates the use of Ada95 in > astrophysics number crunching. I had an email exchange with Martin Stift a few days ago, in which he expressed wonderment at the fact that his stuff drew no reaction at all for years, and then suddenly in the past few months he's been getting lots of feedback. Nice. (But please don't overload him with code maintenance requests: I for one am also interested in his research on Cepheids...) > |> Does Ada fit for this? > > It think it does! You have all the types available (including complex), > you have a better exception handling than in Fortran, and with tasks, > you have a powerful construct for using parallel processors. As an experienced Fortran user who is experimenting with Ada 95 for some (small-scale, to begin with) numerical projects, let me comment on this. The types are indeed available (and the type system itself is much better than that of Fortran in my view, although I'm quite certain that most of my colleagues would disagree with me on this). The array operations, however, are not. Some of them can be implemented in user-defined packages, but I wouldn't want to bet that Ada compilers are very good at optimising away array temporaries. (Many Fortran compilers also leave to be desired in this area, but at least the more serious vendors are working on this sort of thing.) I've found that GNAT, for example (3.10p; I haven't had time to upgrade to 3.11 yet), seems to require a lot of stack space to execute something like Big_2d_Array := (others => (others => 0.0)); as if it was allocating a temporary for the right hand side, then copying the result to the left hand side. Recoding this as two nested loops got rid of the stack overflow. This was all with -O3, by the way. As for Ada tasking making it easier to program parallel processors, I don't buy that claim. The problem with Ada tasking is that the programmer has to make it explicit. This is in stark contrast to Fortran's pragma-based schemes (OpenMP, HPF) where the compiler takes care of the details and the programmer only supplies a few hints. Ada and Fortran are on more of an equal footing where explicit message-passing parallelism (based for example on the MPI standard) is concerned. But this paradigm is better described in terms of Annex E stuff than of tasking constructs. Perhaps an OpenMP-style parallel Fortran program could be translated using Ada tasks, at least in some cases. The obvious platform to benchmark this on would be SGI. I don't have time to try it myself (and I've always steered clear of parallelism as much as I could, since it's a big sink of developer's energy), but perhaps someone else will. The results would be well worth publishing, if that can help. > Ada is > certainly much better suited than C, which thanks to the array/pointer > duality prevents many of the strong optimizations that number-crunching > applications need on modern RISK architectures. C implicitely assumes > that arrays have to be stored always in RAM (as opposed to registers), > while compilers can handle non-aliased Ada arrays much more flexible. Yes, there is no doubt that Ada is superior to C. But that's a weak strawman, as Fortran 95 is itself so much better than C that no one in his right mind even tries to put them on equal footing. The question is Fortran 95 vs. Ada 95 vs. C++ 98. Also, production C compilers from reputable vendors usually support at least a command-line option (sometimes also a pragma) to permit no-aliasing assumptions. > (I actually wonder, whether GNAT 3.11p does produce more efficient > code for non-aliased arrays than the corresponding C code, or whether > GNAT limits itself to the optimization capabilities of gcc.) The gcc back-end is being improved in this area to support g77 (and GNAT too, I suppose), so the two possibilities are not mutually exclusive. > |> It's not only a question of types available, but also > |> of efficiency (speed) of the compilers. > > You get Ada compilers today that are quite comparable in efficiency > with C compilers. On more exotic architectures such as super > computers, you might not find the same level of optimization yet > as it is available for Fortran 77 compilers. It depends a lot on the > architecture. And on the coding style. (This is reportedly also true of C++, and in any case it should come as no surprise.) There is a learning curve both for users (who have to learn about the relative efficiency of various approaches) and for compiler developers (who tend to work hardest on optimising the constructs they see in user code, and will need to see a lot of number-crunching applications in Ada for their guidance). Exactly the same issues arise with Fortran users and Fortran compiler writers, the difference being that progress has been more rapid because the user base is larger. (To avoid misunderstandings, I'll underline: _for classical number-crunching applications_. I'm not in a position to comment on other application domains.) At this time I wouldn't commit to Ada for my heavily CPU-bound applications (which I'm not going to recode from scratch anyway, for obvious reasons). But I have no doubt whatsoever that something like "Numerical Recipes in Ada 95" would be appropriate. (Well, except for the fact that Numerical Recipes code is meant as an illustration of the various techniques involved, not as industrial-strength reusable software.) If you *really* want to "sell" Ada to a Fortran user, show him/her how to instantiate generics. (It helps if you have useful generics at hand, and that's where something like Numerical Recipes would fit into the picture.) And of course Ada is a perfectly fine choice for a number of support tools (visualisation, file format conversion, etc.) that are also part of supercomputing's bread and butter. That alone can make it worth learning. Recently I got a colleague interested in learning C simply by solving an endianness problem he had with a few routines out of my toolbox, which I customized under his eyes. Had my solution been in Ada (and it would have been more elegant in Ada), I might just as easily have hooked him on that. (Well, except I couldn't have pointed him to an Ada reference book in the reading room the way I did with K&R.) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-24 0:00 ` bglbv @ 1999-04-25 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner 1999-04-25 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1999-04-25 0:00 ` bill 0 siblings, 2 replies; 19+ messages in thread From: Edwin Guenthner @ 1999-04-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) bglbv@my-dejanews.com wrote: > I had an email exchange with Martin Stift a few days ago, in which > he expressed wonderment at the fact that his stuff drew no reaction > at all for years, and then suddenly in the past few months he's > been getting lots of feedback. Nice. (But please don't overload him > with code maintenance requests: I for one am also interested in > his research on Cepheids...) Probably the reason for this is the Java hype. People suddenly realize that there are more languages in this world than just FORTRAN. There are even some people who think that Java will be the future in numerical computing (see http://www.javagrande.org/). I dont know if this is true - I just hope it and wait for things to happen. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-25 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner @ 1999-04-25 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1999-04-25 0:00 ` bill 1 sibling, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1999-04-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <7fvbth$4m4$1@news.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>, Edwin Guenthner <s_guenth@studsun1.informatik.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote: > There are even some people who think that Java will be > the future in numerical computing (see > http://www.javagrande.org/). Seems unlikely unless the fundamental problems with the floating-point model of Java are solved. The current spec requires disastrously inefficient execution modes on many high performance machines. The goals of absolute portability and high performance are seriously incompatible when it comes to floating-point if by portability you mean bit-for-bit identity in results. Robert Dewar -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-25 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner 1999-04-25 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1999-04-25 0:00 ` bill 1999-04-25 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner 1999-04-26 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen 1 sibling, 2 replies; 19+ messages in thread From: bill @ 1999-04-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <7fvbth$4m4$1@news.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>, Edwin says... > > >There are even some people who think that Java will be the future in >numerical computing (see http://www.javagrande.org/). > I like Java, but for numerics? There is no user defined operators, so instead of writing a = (b * (c +d)) / h ; -- where a,b,c,d,h are non primitive data types one would write a = b.multiply(c.add(d)).divide(h); Now, really, which is better? Also, in java, the Interger, Float, Long etc.. types, can't be used to limit the range they are define over. For example, in Ada, I can have a variable of type integer, but limit this varible to only takes values between say 0..100, and have the run-time check when/if I try to write a value outside this range. This is good, since it allows me to design my data types to match the problem domain. of course, one can make a java class to do that, but it is not part of the language. Ada allows me to have closer correspondess between my datatypes and the physical system. C/C++ /Fortran/Java do not without doing more work on your part to program these limits in. Also, Java has no enumeration datatype. bad bad. (how could one design a language in this modern age, and not have an enumeration data type?) The only thing that Java has over any other language nowadays, is that it has a much richer standard API to do so many things (from GUI, database, graphics, networking, distributed, animation, tasking, etc..) With Java, one can, out of the box, do many more things with it than in Ada. This will remain so, unless, and untill, Ada gets a standard library that is many orders of magnitudes more extensive than the current one. Bill ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-25 0:00 ` bill @ 1999-04-25 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner 1999-04-26 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen 1 sibling, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread From: Edwin Guenthner @ 1999-04-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) > I like Java, but for numerics? Of course, there are a lot of problems (the people from JavaGrande came up with some more). But AFAIK Sun knows about this. There are some things going on (for example I extended a compiler to use complex numbers like a basic type with java ;-). Lets see what happens during the next months. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-25 0:00 ` bill 1999-04-25 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner @ 1999-04-26 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen 1999-04-26 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner 1 sibling, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread From: Jean-Pierre Rosen @ 1999-04-26 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) bill@ a �crit dans le message <7fvpl8$mpm@drn.newsguy.com>... [lot of interesting stuff deleted] Don't forget also the problem with arrays and dynamic allocation. Since every object is dynamically allocated, a 100x100 array of anything but simple types will require 10_000 dynamic allocations. Since there are NO multi-dimensionnal arrays (only arrays of arrays), even a 100x100 array of int will require 100 dynamic allocations. Moreover, the "array of arrays" paradigm has a very unfortunate consequence: if you clone an array of arrays, only the *first* dimension gets cloned, i.e. you get a array which is partially cloned, partially shared. Such a beast has neither a value nor a reference semantics! And since arrays have no definitions of their own, it is not possible to redefine a "clone", unless you package your array into something else. When I see benchmarks telling that Java is almost as fast as compiled code, I really wonder if the benchmarks included things like matrix operations... Does anyone have figures of Java efficiency in this area ? --------------------------------------------------------- J-P. Rosen (Rosen.Adalog@wanadoo.fr) Visit Adalog's web site at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/adalog ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-26 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen @ 1999-04-26 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner 1999-04-26 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn 0 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread From: Edwin Guenthner @ 1999-04-26 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Have a look at: http://www.cs.unc.edu/Research/HARPOON/ Or check out "ninja" at www.alphaworks.ibm.com And there is really a lot of stuff at www.javagrande.org. People know about all those problems ... and hope that SUN will take care of some of them. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-26 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner @ 1999-04-26 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn 1999-04-27 0:00 ` me 0 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread From: Markus Kuhn @ 1999-04-26 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Edwin Guenthner <s_guenth@studsun1.informatik.uni-karlsruhe.de> writes: |> And there is really a lot of stuff at www.javagrande.org. |> People know about all those problems ... and hope that SUN will |> take care of some of them. Why would one want to wait until the problems that Java has with number-crunching applications are fixed in the year 2010 (which would turn it de-facto in a completely new language, just as the smartcard subsetting has done), if Ada95 is already a suitable and excellently supported platform available today? Every language has applications that it is particularly suited for. In the case of Java, the paramount design goal was portability-over- everything. There sure is some market for that, and it sure is not number crunching. In numerical applications, you are interested in speed-over-everything plus some assurance over how your numeric types behave. I don't see, why the number crunching community should get excited about a super-portable byte-code interpreter language with a sophisticated GUI API. A language designed for programming GUIs in set-top boxes and Web browsers couldn't be further away from what you want to run your finite-element code on. I do see a number of reasons however, for why the number crunching community should get interested in Ada95 as an alternative to Fortran90 and Fortran95. The childish hype surrounding "Javajavajava" is what has most of all turned me a bit against this language. Java is praised by too many people for applications completely outside its legitimate field, including smartcards, embedded computing, number crunching, image processing, AI, systems programming, etc. Java is well on the way of turning from a programming environment into a religion, and for me at least, this means that healthy scepticism is adviseable. The Ada community also has an excellent language, but treats it pragmatically and with more maturity. Next we hear that Python is the number-crunching language of the future ... 8-) Markus (who participated in his first programming language flame war at the age of 12 and still enjoys it) -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-26 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn @ 1999-04-27 0:00 ` me 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney 0 siblings, 2 replies; 19+ messages in thread From: me @ 1999-04-27 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <7g1qcm$o4$2@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>, mgk25@cl.cam.ac.uk says... > >The childish hype surrounding "Javajavajava" is what has most of all >turned me a bit against this language. But hype sells ! I think the reason for Java popularity is that people in general were not happy with C++ (too complicated, etc..) , and wanted a different OO language, and Java came at the right time, and it looked like C++ to keep the crowds happy. One thing that I did not see many discuss about java, is its default use of references. What I do not like in Java, is that it is not 'value' based by default. meaning, when I write (where A and B are objects): A = B; then I go and modify the value of object B in some other part of the program, this results in A's value also being modified. This is a side effect of the fact that in Java, objects are references, hence in the above assignment, A takes on the same reference as B, making A and B references to the same 'object' data on the heap. (In simpler terms, A and B point to the same object on the heap). (this one time caused subtle a bug in one of my programs, when I started learning Java, as I was used to value-based languages, untill I noticed this. I was 'saving' objects in a vector, then reading new values into the source objects, but this was also causing the objects in the vector to change indirectly). To make A get its own value of the object B, one needs to be explicit and write A = B.clone(); (Assuming B supports the clone() method). So, in Java, to get the value, you need to be explicit, else you get the reference (pointer). In Ada, (and C++), they are value based, i.e. the default in assignment is to get the value of the object. If you need to get a reference, you need to be explicit. Some people might not consider this a big deal, and can get used to it (as with LISP). For me, I find that I spend more mental energy while programming in Java for the above reason, to watch out for when I need to use clone() or not. I do not have this problem with value based languages, such as Ada. What do you like more? or think is better, value-based assignments, or reference based? (I assume you would prefer value-based if you are an Ada programmer). me. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-27 0:00 ` me @ 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen 1999-04-28 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney 1 sibling, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread From: Jean-Pierre Rosen @ 1999-04-27 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) me@me a �crit dans le message <7g4av3$bgd@drn.newsguy.com>... [good stuff about reference semantics deleted] >To make A get its own value of the object B, one needs to be explicit and >write > >A = B.clone(); > >(Assuming B supports the clone() method). > But, as I noted in a previous message, this doesn't work if A and B are two-dimensional arrays. You should then write: for (i=0; i<B.length; i++) A[i]=B[i].clone() ... unless A and B are tri-dimensional arrays, in which case you should write: (etc, etc.) --------------------------------------------------------- J-P. Rosen (Rosen.Adalog@wanadoo.fr) Visit Adalog's web site at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/adalog ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen @ 1999-04-28 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner 1999-04-28 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen 0 siblings, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread From: Edwin Guenthner @ 1999-04-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Jean-Pierre Rosen <rosen.adalog@wanadoo.fr> wrote: > > But, as I noted in a previous message, this doesn't work if A and B > are two-dimensional arrays. You should then write: Pardon? There is now law in Java that says: you are not allowed to write a clone method which will give you a deep copy of a whole array. You have to iterate over all fields - but you should hide this detail from your user. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-28 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner @ 1999-04-28 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen 0 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread From: Jean-Pierre Rosen @ 1999-04-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Edwin Guenthner a �crit dans le message <7g6c5v$8tg$2@news.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>... >Jean-Pierre Rosen <rosen.adalog@wanadoo.fr> wrote: > >> >> But, as I noted in a previous message, this doesn't work if A and B >> are two-dimensional arrays. You should then write: > >Pardon? There is now law in Java that says: >you are not allowed to write a clone method which will give you a deep >copy of a whole array. > >You have to iterate over all fields - but you should hide this detail >from your user. The trouble is that arrays are *implicit* classes. AFAIK, there is no way to redefine a method for stuff[], only for stuff. Therefore, you must package your array into a class. But if the user of stuff wants to declare a stuff[], there is nothing you can do. --------------------------------------------------------- J-P. Rosen (Rosen.Adalog@wanadoo.fr) Visit Adalog's web site at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/adalog ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-27 0:00 ` me 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen @ 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney 1999-04-27 0:00 ` dennison 1 sibling, 1 reply; 19+ messages in thread From: Matthew Heaney @ 1999-04-27 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) me@me writes: > I think the reason for Java popularity is that people in general were not > happy with C++ (too complicated, etc..) , and wanted a different OO > language, and Java came at the right time, and it looked like C++ to > keep the crowds happy. I doubt it. The only people who think C++ is too complex are the marketing people at Sun, who spend millions selling the complexity-is-bad idea to the rest of us. Programmers want expressive languages that allow them to compose powerful abstractions. Mostly they don't care about language complexity, in spite of what Sun says. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney @ 1999-04-27 0:00 ` dennison 0 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread From: dennison @ 1999-04-27 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <m3wvyyt1er.fsf@mheaney.ni.net>, Matthew Heaney <matthew_heaney@acm.org> wrote: > me@me writes: > > > I think the reason for Java popularity is that people in general were not > > happy with C++ (too complicated, etc..) , and wanted a different OO > > language, and Java came at the right time, and it looked like C++ to > > keep the crowds happy. > > I doubt it. The only people who think C++ is too complex are the > marketing people at Sun, who spend millions selling the > complexity-is-bad idea to the rest of us. I suspect Niklaus Wirth and fans of Oberon would disagree with this statement. -- T.E.D. -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) 1999-04-23 0:00 Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) Hans N. Beck 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Gautier 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn @ 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Joachim Schroeer 2 siblings, 0 replies; 19+ messages in thread From: Joachim Schroeer @ 1999-04-27 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1681 bytes --] Hans N. Beck schrieb in Nachricht <372083A1.45A5EB97@t-online.de>... >Hi, > >does anyone has experiences with Ada and numerical >applications ? >Does Ada fit for this ? It's not only a question of types >available, but also >of efficiency (speed) of the compilers. Yeeeees I know, in >the most cases Fortran >is used, but perhaps anyone walks on new fields ? > >Thanks ! > >Hans Ada is excellently apt for numerical software. I wrote a little publication for the OOP 97 (in german, "Numerische und symbolische Mathematik mit Ada 95"). There are some 30000 lines of code showing the use of Ada for state space systems and numerical integration and for symbolic mathematics. The software as well as the documentation (180 pages in german) are freely available from the following source: http://www.cci.de ftp://cci.de/pub/Ada/Numeric/ oopmath.tgz & read.me There are a some generic packages for simple linear algebra like vectors and matrices. In the 80's at the university of paderborn a group of 4 students / assistants also implemented a subset of the linpack/eispack algorithms in Ada 83, especially linear algebra, svd, eigenvalues. This software is well tested and still is used in the institute for controller design and nonlinear simulation. It's not yet on any public internet server, but the leader of the institute (Prof. Dr.-Ing. J. L�ckel) allowed to make it public. I want to sort the Ada 83 packages into my new Ada 95 package hirarchy before making them available, but seldom have time for that task. Dr.-Ing. Joachim Schr�er AMST-Systemtechnik GmbH Postbox 3 A-5282 Ranshofen, Austria Tel.: (++)43 7722 892 30 E-Mail: schroeer@amst.co.at ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 19+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1999-04-28 0:00 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 19+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 1999-04-23 0:00 Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?) Hans N. Beck 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Gautier 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Gautier 1999-04-23 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn 1999-04-24 0:00 ` bglbv 1999-04-25 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner 1999-04-25 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1999-04-25 0:00 ` bill 1999-04-25 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner 1999-04-26 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen 1999-04-26 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner 1999-04-26 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn 1999-04-27 0:00 ` me 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen 1999-04-28 0:00 ` Edwin Guenthner 1999-04-28 0:00 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney 1999-04-27 0:00 ` dennison 1999-04-27 0:00 ` Joachim Schroeer
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