begin Aaron King <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Matt, > > I've had a lot of experience solving ODE, and I have come to prefer > programming in C or its derivatives by far to programming in FORTRAN.
i'd agree if you're talking specifically about "FORTRAN" (aka, fortran 77) and not for "fortran" (aka, fortran 90 or fortran 95). as a language, f90/95 is at first approximation, nearly indistinguishable from C. as a scientific tool, f90/95 is a MUCH more forgiving language than C. plus, it has many "scriptisms" that are reminiscent of perl and are useful to a scientist who doesn't make programming his/her career. do i use it? no. but that's just because i'm so comfortable with C. however, i recognize a good thing when i see it, and f90/95 is a good thing. note, as of right now, there are no free f90/95 compilers which can cramp a person's style, but g95 is in the works right now. > Nevertheless, the fact remains that the best, freely-available, ODE solvers > are all written in FORTRAN. This has never posed a problem for me, however: > I simply compile with g77 and link to the driver routine (written in C) with > gcc. You may want to think about compiler flags and may have to get ahold of > the f2c library so you can link against that too. > > I would not recommend writing your own ODE solver. Understanding the way > your code is working, in general, is a good thing. Knowing the details of > the implementation of an adaptive step-size, multiorder ODE solver is > another. difference in opinion. it wouldn't even occur to me to use any code if i wasn't intimately familiar with the details of an algorithm's implementation. i wouldn't even give it a first thought. if i don't know or understand 100% of every single line, every minute detail of a piece of code, i wouldn't use it for my research. games? yes. playing around? yes. run my operating system? yes. for my research? never. > I would recommend getting started with LSODE, which you can > download, in FORTRAN, from the netlib site: www.netlib.org. Then you > can focus on the science. fwiw, i've found that knowing the details of a specific algorithm has helped me understand more about the problem at hand. pete (still sympathizing. these are the issues i wrestled with when i first started grad school. whatever you decide to do, if it gets you the right answer, it's a good solution. but just make sure it gets you the right solution.). -- GPG Fingerprint: B9F1 6CF3 47C4 7CD8 D33E 70A9 A3B9 1945 67EA 951D _______________________________________________ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
