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From: bill@
Subject: Re: Ada for numerics computation (i.e. forget Fortran ?)
Date: 1999/04/25
Message-ID: <7fvpl8$mpm@drn.newsguy.com>#1/1
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References: <372083A1.45A5EB97@t-online.de>
 <7fqeua$ih8$1@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk> <8790bhslfz.fsf@bglbv.my-dejanews.com>
 <7fvbth$4m4$1@news.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
Organization: Newsguy News Service [http://www.newsguy.com]
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1999-04-25T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

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