On Wednesday, 23 January 2013 at 22:39:04 UTC, Alan wrote:
I saw an old thread from 2004 while doing a google search that
discussed D and scientific computing and was looking for some
more recent information or opinions from people who have used
it for such purposes.
I am a graduate student and my thesis work is in numerical
modeling. While I have some experience using Fortran and C, I
am not obligated to use any particular language for my work. I
like the design goals behind D and the syntax. I was would like
to know if D can compete with C or Fortran for numerical work.
Is anyone out there using D for heavy numeric work?
Hi Alan,
I use D to build a fairly large project to analyze whole genome
sequences from multiple individuals. I will actually upload
things into Bitbucket soon, I will let people on this forum know.
I use it straight as a replacement for C++, that means I use it
for all the numeric work I used C and C++ before.
To name a few highlights:
You can very easily adapt the code samples from Numerical Recipes
3rd edition (which are in C++) to D, with a lot more convenient
built-in arrays and associative arrays.
Also, you can link the Gnu scientific library (GSL) straight into
your D code. This actually had some bugs in previous versions of
the compiler, but now it is really flawless.
I use the GSL vector class to do very fast Matrix-Matrix
multiplications with GSL's blast interface. Also, I use GSL's
special functions.
So I think D is ideal for scientific developers that start new
projects. We don't have to convince huge teams to endeavour in a
new language. We can just pick the best there is :-)
Stephan
