From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,6609c40f81b32989 X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news4.google.com!proxad.net!feeder1-2.proxad.net!usenet-fr.net!gegeweb.org!aioe.org!not-for-mail From: "Nasser M. Abbasi" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Why is Ada considered "too specialized" for scientific use Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 17:29:43 -0700 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: FY6NKDidHH3MqxQW2YvwTg.user.speranza.aioe.org X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3350 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original X-EsetScannerBuild: 6873 X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.3598 X-EsetId: 321EA926BF2030386758 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:10838 Date: 2010-04-04T17:29:43-07:00 List-Id: "Jerry" wrote in message news:e53558e5-5a83-4170-b8eb-4c8564c1788d@g10g2000yqh.googlegroups.com... "No. I use Ada every day in my personal research and it is outstanding. I can choose any language that I want and I chose Ada." That is good to know. It would be good if there was a web page which specializes in giving information on Ada for scientific work (links, etc...). When searching the web for Ada for scientific/numerical programming, there is very little information. (few links, but very few examples that I found showing Ada for numerical work for example). But one thing I would guess is good in Ada for numerical work, is the ability to define an array which can start from zero or from one. Many of the formulas in textbooks assume zero index as the start of the array, but when using a language with arrays that start at 1, then this was always a source of errors (the one-off error) when it comes to implementation. It does not help if the language array starts from 0, because if a formula is define to start from 1, the same problem, but in reverse will occur. I think Ada solves this nicely by allowing one to define the type to match the problem. ofcourse one can say that they can just define a new class in Java/C++/etc... to do this as well, but I think the Ada solution is better as it is part of the language itself and is probably safer also. This is only one thing out of 100's more things that I can see an advantage of Ada for numerical work (which is full of arrays and matrices types). If anyone knows of an advanced course in a computational scientific/engineering field at a US university which uses Ada, I'd like to know about it. --Nasser