On 1/13/07, Hero_xbd!.RRR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[...] Could you please recommend some tutorials on how to establish a scientific computing environment, esp. for physicists and mathematicians, for study and research? And what packages are best for starting? Or some advice for me to avoid useless and time-consuming trying-and-discarding newbie loops?
Trying and discarding is fundamental to research, but you have to design experiments that will teach you something. Writing your own scientific language is the best way to learn, and there are lots of open source examples to draw from. Science is full of small communities consisting of a group of people who work in the same area and often exchange software tools along with preprints, etc. In a given area there may be more than one such community, depending on personalities, etc. Eventually you will find yourself a member of some such community and will want to use the same software as others in the community. Meanwhile, it is good to learn a few general purpose high-level languages so you will have some perspective and insight. Every scientist should have some experience with the S-plus language (R is a good free implementation), the matlab language (octave is a good free implementation), and maple (maxima has some of Maple's capabilities, but the language is quite different). In certain fields you will encounter other general purpose tools: Mathematica -- combines a matrix language with symbolic manipulation and good graphics. IDL (interactive data language) -- close relative to matlab, but emphasises image processing and supports more data types than most languages, so is good for low level interfaces to oddball formats APL -- powerful and influentical language, not widely used but can't be avoided in some fields and can do amazing things in the hands of an expert. The free packages mentioned above use lisp, C, C++, and Fortran, so if you are interested in the internal workings of these, you will need some basic skills with all 4 languages as well as tools such as bison and yacc or antlr. Scheme (a lisp dialect), however, is the place to start learning programming concepts (look at MIT's introductory courses). -- George N. White III <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
