Re: Speeding up Mathematica
- To: uiucuxc!yoda.ncsa.uiuc.edu!mathgroup
- Subject: Re: Speeding up Mathematica
- From: uiucuxc!apple.com!malcolm
- Date: Wed, 14 Mar 90 18:00:09 -0800
I guess these are Steve's Christensen's comments.... I have also found it to be a lot of fun to find tricky ways to optimize Mathematica code using lower level Mathematica functions. Conversations with Paul and others at WRI convince me that there are lots of nice techniques one can try. - SMC] OK...that's the last straw. I read Roman Maeder's book on Mathematica programming and found it to remind me of all the reasons I *don't* like Mathematica. It is a really well written book, don't get me wrong, but why should it be necessary? I don't consider a system to be good when you need to know lots of really minor details about syntax and when things get evaluated. Consider this little excerpt from the first page (67) I opened to: An expression with head Sequence is very elusive. You cannot even look at it with FullForm[]. The book is just filled with "tricky" things like this. I realize that there are good reasons for each of these little gotchas. But on the whole I think Mathematica has way too many of them. Other languages (Lisp, C, Prolog) don't seem to have this problem. I think this (and the cost) are the biggest weak points for Mathematica. I'm still a heavy Mathematica notebook user. These statements aren't any sort of Apple policy. I'm just wondering aloud. Malcolm