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Re: Re: Beginner: List Indexing and Assignment

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  • Subject: [mg94546] Re: [mg94515] Re: Beginner: List Indexing and Assignment
  • From: C Rose <cjr.list.alias.1 at me.com>
  • Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 02:32:50 -0500 (EST)
  • References: <gi2ut4$a5h$1@smc.vnet.net> <200812151246.HAA26315@smc.vnet.net>

Hi Albert

Thanks for your considered reply to my question.

> All in all for this very special task the other system wins in many  
> respects, but of course there are many other tasks, where the outcome
> will be (very) different. It really depends on what you plan to do  
> and of course how you think about your problems and how you  
> formulate possible solutions.

I think it's natural for one to think about any new system in terms of  
familiar ones. Most of my programs in the other system make fairly  
heavy use of functional programming and anonymous functions, so this  
aspect of Mathematica is very appealing (especially given that  
Mathematica offers much richer support for this style of programming).  
I've also programmed using OCaml---albeit at a hobbyist level---which  
has excellent support for pattern matching, so again, this style of  
programming is quite attractive.

> If operations on numerical matrices is all you are doing, all you  
> will be doing in the future and all you can think of
> (that should by no means be interpreted that I suggest you  
> couldn't :-)), a move to Mathematica will probably not pay off...

Most of my work involves working with image and/or signal data and is  
consequently numerical in nature. However, Mathematica appears to  
offer significant benefits in non-numerical areas that are  
increasingly vital (such as being able to connect to a remote kernel  
running on a powerful machine; the fact that Mathematica is largely a  
single product that does not need numerous 'add-ons' to be licensed;  
etc.). I'm also keen to experiment with model-fitting in Mathematica,  
given that Mathematica can presumably symbolically differentiate the  
objective function. It certainly seems worth evaluating.

Thanks again for your help.

Chris


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