I do not fully understand your questions, but if I were learning math, I would try to keep using both tools.
The issues, in my mind include perspective (different tools reveal different aspects of issues) and accessibility (when you are learning you will need to draw as many useful connections as you can). Put differently, on the one hand you have limited time to figure things out and it takes time to express things in multiple ways, but on the other hand it's the process of figuring out how to express things in different ways that constitutes learning maths. That said, J doesn't inherently use libraries (other than the standard C libraries) but can use things like LAPACK. It's not LAPACK support is built into J but that the interpreter allows you to reference arbitrary shared libraries (or DLLs on windows). [So, for example, it's possible to have a J script which includes compiled C, finds and runs a C compiler on it [assuming one is available], then links to the result. This isn't implementation pattern particularly common though, because using external libraries means that they can crash and take down your J session with it. It's also possible to run such libraries in an external program, of course - including a copy of your J session.] Meanwhile, for speed... it is very difficult to make generally valid statements here. Expect some things to be faster on one system and others to be faster on another. Expect also that choices you make will have disproportionate influences on speed. -- Raul On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 1:39 AM, Robert Herman <[email protected]> wrote: > I am trying to evaluate J for doing mathematics vs. Mathematica. I own the > Home edition of Mathematica. At the moment, I am trying to teach myself > higher maths with an eye towards completing my maths degree online. I never > finished my degree many moons ago. I like the notebook structure and > multi-paradigm approach in Mathematica, but I am gravitating towards J's > succinctness and analogy to learning it's symbols akin to mathematics' > symbols. Iverson's 'Notation as a Tool of Thought' really grabbed me. My > latest curiosity about J, if I understand it correctly, is that J is > provided as an executable for several platforms. That it was written in C. > Now, does it implement standard c maths libraries optimized for speed and > accuracy? How does the linux version compare to Mathematica in terms of > doing certain operations, say large arrays, for signal processing, from a > time and numerical accuracy index? Where can I find a listing of the > libraries it uses, in the source headers? Thank you. > > Rob > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
