15 Oct
2005
15 Oct
'05
9:50 a.m.
>>>> "Gordon" == Gordon JC Pearce
<gordonjcp at gjcp.net> writes:
Gordon> Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez wrote:
> by the numerical scientific computing community.
I even know why,
> but I don't want to star a language war.
>
> Carlos.
Gordon> Aw go on, tell us... I for one would love to know why, if
Gordon> only to see if it's worth brushing up my rather rusty FORTRAN
Gordon> "skills".
It's one of very few languages (perhaps the only one, unless you count
shiny new C++ standards) in which complex numbers are a first class
data type. A lot of scientific computation involves complex numbers
(Fourier transform, electromagnetic field simulation, etc.), and being
able to write plain expressions instead of a tangle of function calls
is a big help.
paul