Re: Lists and speed
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg30159] Re: Lists and speed
- From: Jens-Peer Kuska <kuska at informatik.uni-leipzig.de>
- Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 02:19:14 -0400 (EDT)
- Organization: Universitaet Leipzig
- References: <9k5qp5$ha6$1@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Hi, > About a month ago I submitted a question about lists and received some > very useful help (summarised below). However, although my program (a > coupled map lattice for population dynamics) now works well with Ted > Ersek's modifications, it still takes over 20 minutes (compared to the > original 40 minutes) to run. > A colleague has just coded the same thing in another system, which runs in around 40 _seconds_...is this unusual? It depends. Mathematica is a *computer algebra* it can do things that you can't do with "another system". *That* is it's strength. Numerics is only useful, if you have a hybrid algorithm that use a lot of symbolic computation to give you a final numeric answer. I'm usual try an numeric algorithm in Mathematica. But when I found a solution that works I switch to C. The convenient programming in Mathematica make it slow, thats why you get quickly a working program but you have to spend a lot of time to get a quick program. > I was happy to trade-off speed for faster development time compared to > Pascal etc, but the difference here seems so huge that I'm concerned that > my Mathematica programming is still way-off. A "quick and dirty" program is a "quick and dirty" program in *any* language. The program/ algorithm is not modifyed by the programming language. Mathematica has many "fine details" unusual to a C/FORTRAN programmer. That make it difficult to switch you thinking from imperative/procedural/object oriented programming to the functional style of Mathematica. If you try a procedual style in Mathematica it *must* be slow. Regards Jens