[Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index]

Re: Re: Mathematica and F#

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg91652] Re: Re: Mathematica and F#
• From: "peter lindsay" <pl.0 at me.com>
• Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2008 04:31:10 -0400 (EDT)
• References: <200808271042.GAA21194@smc.vnet.net> <g962q2$c66$1@smc.vnet.net>

please see comments inline below

2008/8/30 Jon Harrop <jon at ffconsultancy.com>:
> peter lindsay wrote:
>> I am not an expert in either Mathematica or functional programming,
but...
>> is there really any appetite from Mathematica users to tie themselves
>> into a Microsoft product?
>
> I can understand that argument from the open source perspective but
> Mathematica users are obviously already tying themselves into proprietary
> products...
>
>> Would Haskell not be a safer bet?
>
> Haskell has its own trade-offs that I will happily discuss elsewhere.
I am not an expert in functional programming...

> Suffice to say that modern scientific computing is about writing many
small
> disposable "script" programs, e.g. for massaging, analysing and
visualizing
> data.

not in my experience - no, not at all. Much of the work my colleagues are
involved in uses Fortran, IDL and to a much lesser extent C++ with
occasional scripting in perl or python. My Statistics colleagues use SAS and
my pure maths colleagues use GAP and Haskell amongst others. However, my
point was: does anyone really want to tie them selves in to Microsoft . By
the way, we also tend not to massage data.
>The risks associated with vendor lock-in are then tiny, of course.

with respect - not at all. The risks of lock-in are high and I would
recommend anyone considering "buying-in" completely  to some proprietary
brand [ even including Mathematica ] to be extremely careful if their
professional careers are to depend on that vendor.

>
> So I would not hesitate to recommend both Mathematica and F# to working
> scientists. Not least because they compliment each other extremely well.
>

for the moment, maybe ....

> --
> Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
> http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?u
>
>