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Re: New free introductory book on Mathematica programming, and a few

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg96435] Re: New free introductory book on Mathematica programming, and a few
  • From: "Sjoerd C. de Vries" <sjoerd.c.devries at gmail.com>
  • Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:46:08 -0500 (EST)
  • References: <gn11ht$834$1@smc.vnet.net>

Great!

Cheers -- Sjoerd

On Feb 12, 1:35 pm, Leonid Shifrin <lsh... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Group,
>
> This is my first post here, although I have been
> a long-term Mathematica user. My field is (more correctly,
> was until recently) Theoretical and Mathematical Physics.
>
> I have been using Mathematica for about 12 years now,
> but only the last 4 as a programmer. Being a Mathematica
> enthusiast, I have written an introductory book (well, a
> first part of it) on Mathematica programming based on my
> own experiences and my compilation of existing literature,
> as an expansion of notes-to-self. The motivation was to
> minimize frustration of learning Mathematica programming for
> someone like myself 4 years ago.
>
> My experience is that, for a beginner, it is easiest to learn
> Mathematica (programming) when it is illustrated with many simple
> examples and is as much separated from any field-specific
> application as possible. This is what I tried to do in the
> book.
>
> What I had in mind was a pure programming book about Mathematica
> language, with no reference to any specific field-related
> functionality, with lots of examples being small but complete
> projects, less comprehensive than Mathematica book but containing more
> substantial programs, easier to read than Roman Maeder's books
> (but by no means a substitute), more applied than David Wagner's
> (apart from the fact that it is out of print), going a little deeper into
> the language core and being somewhat more pragmatic than
> Paul Wellin et al (please don't get me wrong - these are all excellent
> books), and centered around functional programming layer, main
> higher-order functions, idiomatic Mathematica programming and
> efficiency.
>
> An ideal reader for it would be a person who has some Mathematica
> experience as a user, needs to write programs more substantial
> than a few one-liners, and wants to understand the logic of the
> language and ways to program idiomatically, minimize programming
> effort and maximize program's efficiency. Parts of the book
> (chapters 1-4) can also be useful for more occasional Mathematica
>  users, and the last chapter may be of some interest to more
> experienced users as well.
>
> I much hope that the book will be not completely useless  and
> that I will get some feedback which will help me improve it.  If you th=
ink
> that some material is described inaccurately, or missing, or unnecessary,
> or whatever, please let me know!
>
> The book is available for free from my web site,
>
> <http://www.mathprogramming-intro.org>,
>
> and is published under Creative Commons Non-commercial
> share-alike License. It is possible to read it online or
> download a pdf version.
>
> Apart from the book, I have made several tools that I use
>  myself and that I believe could be of interest to
> some Mathematica users. I plan to sumbit them to MathSource
> soon, but will appreciate any feedback even before that,
> while they are in "alpha".
>
> All packages are accompanied by Mathematica notebooks with
> numerous examples of use and explanations of all package's
> features. They have been all tested with v.5.2 and 6.0,
> although perhaps my test suits were too thin. The following
> packages are currently freely available  from the same web site,
> <http://www.mathprogramming-intro.org/additional_resources.html>:
>
> *************************************************************************=
******************
>
> - Cache
>
>     Creates a cached version of a given function and
>     fetches results of frequent function calls  from cache
>     of a fixed user-defined size. Slower than f[x_]:=f[x]=...
>     idiom, but you control the size of DownValues list. Can
>     be useful for functions which are at least minimally
>     computationally demanding, in unattended computations.
>
> - UnsortedOperations
>
>     Reasonably fast functions to do various manipulations
>     with several lists without sorting, such as mapping
>     a function on elements of one list being members of
>     another one, unsorted Union, Intersection, Complement,
>     etc. This package is an expansion of the last case
>     study in the last chapter of the book.
>
> - AttributesOfPureFunctions
>
>     Produces new pure functions at run-time, with the
>     desired sets of attributes but otherwise the same as
>     the original ones. Can also "wrap" the "normal"
>     (DownValue-based) function into a pure function wrapper,
>     with the pure function sharing with the original all
>     Attributes that make sense for pure functions.
>
> - CheckOptions
>
>     For any user-defined (or modified) DownValue-based
>     option-taking function, which uses the ___?OptionQ to
>     declare options, adds new definitions that check
>     options for validity (not just the option name, but
>     also the option's rhs) and can execute arbitrary user-
>     defined code upon receiving inappropriate option(s) (such
>     as returning $Failed, Throw-ing an exception, etc).
>     The limitations are discussed in :Discussion:
>     section of the package documentation.
>
> - PackageOptionChecks
>
>     Elevates the functionality of  CheckOptions to the level
>     of the package(context), while retains the control on
>     the level of individual functions as well. Adds an
>     easy-to use interface to "protect" package's functions
>     from inappropriate options. Can work from within the
>     package of interest, or "externally" (in the latter case
>     no code modifications for the package itself are needed).
>     Can be also used for Global` context during interactive
>     development (before putting functions into a package).
>     Essentially, allows to "meta-program" the package by
>     specifying the response actions for each function after
>     (and independently) of the main function's code, and
>     gives the user external control over this responding
>     behavior. Can also be used as a debugging tool.
>     Limitations are discussed in the :Discussion: section of
>     the package documentation.
>
> - PackageManipulations
>
>     Allows to dynamically reload, clear or remove the
>     package's context in a way consistent with general
>     package mechanics in Mathematica. Useful for interactive
>     package development, especially for larger projects with
>     many inter-dependent packages. Dynamic re-loader tracks
>     escaping symbols and (optionally) can automatically
>     resolve possible shadowing problems occuring before or
>     during re-loading.
>
> - PackageSymbolsDependencies
>
>     For a given package/context, answers the following
>     questions:
>
>     1. Do there exist symbols in other contexts that
>     depend on symbols in a given one through some global
>     properties (DownValues etc)
>     2. If so, what they are
>     3. For a given arbitrary Mathematica expression, what
>     are the symbols used to build it, and their contexts
>     4. Whether or not a given symbol is shadowed
>
>     The package is highly customizable, with its efficiency
>     depending mainly on how much we know about the set of
>     possibly dependent symbols. It can be used to analyze
>     inter-context dependencies in larger projects, and to
>     discover/monitor modifications that a given package
>     induces in other contexts (including overloading system
>     functions). This is also a good practical example of
>     <PackageOptionChecks> in action, since options here are
>     protected with PackageOptionChecks.
>
> *************************************************************************=
************
>
> If you intend to use any of these, I will be happy, but  please read th=
e
> disclaimer on my web site. If you find bugs in the packages or in the boo=
k,
> I will also greatly appreciate if you let me know - please see the
> <report_bug> section of my web site.
>
> Everybody thanks a lot for attention,
> and Best Regards!
>
> Leonid Shifrin



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