RE: Mathematica References for Efficient Programming?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg19121] RE: [mg19103] Mathematica References for Efficient Programming?
- From: "Ersek, Ted R" <ErsekTR at navair.navy.mil>
- Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 23:58:31 -0400
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
lhdill at aol.com wrote: ---------------------------- I'm a Ph.D. chemical engineer who would like to both program efficiently in Mathematica as well as write efficient programs for scientific and engineering applications. I am completely self-taught when it comes to programming, and could benefit from books that describe general programming principles concerning, e.g., error control and debugging, as well as books specifically about Mathematica. I have the book "Mathematica for Scientists and Engineers" by Bahder, which is good but a little dated now since it was written for version 2.2. At Amazon.com I read a review by a person with a M.S. in Computer Science who highly recommended Gray's book "Mastering Mathematica: Programming Methods and Applications". Do the folks in this discussion group have high recommendations for references that would be useful for me? BTW, I would like to be good enough to start a little consulting business using Mathematica. Are there any consultants out there who would be willing to share how they got started and where in industry they find the greatest needs. ======================= REPLY: I have a notebook (300 kB after deleting graphics) where I give all the neat Mathematica tips and tricks I came up with over the past few years. If anyone wants a copy I can email it to you. Some day I will get around to putting it on a web page. ----------------------- Allan Hayes gives expert advise on efficient programming in The Mathematica Journal. See: http://www.mathsource.com/ Select Publications > Periodical > TheMathematicaJournal > The Mathematica Journal Vol, 2 No 2 --Electronic Supplement For more of the same select The Mathematica Journal Vol, 5 No 5 --Electronic Supplement ------------------------ You might also check: http://www.mathsource.com/Content/General/Tutorials/Programming/0205-748 and http://www.mathsource.com/Content22/General/Tutorials/Programming However, I think most of what you will find there is intro level. I think some of the stuff is in postscript files. If you have trouble reading them see: http://support.wolfram.com/Graphics/Formats/PS/Viewing.html ------------------------ I think I give good tutorials on how I did some interesting (and useful) programming at: http://www.mathsource.com/Content/Enhancements/Graphics/2D/0209-876 and http://www.mathsource.com/Content/Enhancements/Graphics/2D/0209-887 With Mathsource you can't beat the price! ------------------------------------ An excellent book for making you into a Mathematica power user is "Power Programming In Mathematica the Kernel", by David B. Wagner. He talks a lot about efficient programming in Mathematica. I assume you already have "The Mathematica Book". It's a must have item. ------------------------------------ At Conference 98, Dave Withoff (of Wolfram Research) gave a talk on Debugging and Optimizing Mathematica programs. At the same conference, John Novak (of Wolfram Research) gave a talk on Programming the V3.0 Front End. There were other talks given that you might be interested in. I think the material from that conference is available from the Wolfram Research web page, but I don't have the URL. ------------------------------------- Regards, Ted Ersek