Re: Re: Speeding up Mathematica
- To: uiucuxc!yoda.ncsa.uiuc.edu!mathgroup
- Subject: Re: Re: Speeding up Mathematica
- From: Steve Christensen <uiucuxc!yoda.ncsa.uiuc.edu!stevec>
- Date: Wed, 14 Mar 90 20:56:49 -0600
In reference to Malcolm at apply.com's comments: I believe that my comments on "tricky ways to optimize" Mathematica were misinterpreted. Most of the code that I and my colleagues write is very straightforward high level Mathematica programming - not nearly as sophisticated as in Roman's book most of the time. After we write prototype code to do some function, we may or may not hack on it to make it faster or more powerful. I think that it is the sign of a good system that permits a user to get to the depths a bit and make things work better. This is true in any computer language. If you have ever tried to write good vectorized FORTRAN code, you know what I mean. It is my feeling that Maeder's book is a wonderful resource for those Mathematica users who want to go the extra mile to get really powerful and elegant programs running. If Mathematica is judged by the number of "gotchas" it has, then I would hate to have to describe most of theoretical physics or mathematics which at first sight seem to be nothing but "gotchas". Steve Christensen