-----Original Message----- From: boost-bounces@lists.boost.org [mailto:boost-bounces@lists.boost.org] On Behalf Of David B. Held Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 7:29 PM To: boost@lists.boost.org Subject: [boost] Re: Boost Mathematicians
"Tom Brinkman" <reportbase@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:20040602235400.88511.qmail@web50401.mail.yahoo.com...
[...] 2) We need a way to attract the best mathmaticians in the world. How can we make the boost libraries an even more attractive development platform for the mathemiticians? [...]
I would guess that we would need to bring Boost up to the level of currently available libraries, in C++ or any other language in order to gain the attention of serious mathematicians. Since there is already a huge investment in other languages (such as GSL, which is written in C), this will be a significant hurdle. We should also ask whether C++ *is* the best development platform for mathematical applications.
I'd say (speaking as a soi-disant mathematician) you also need to find ways to overcome the perception that "other languages do it faster and/or more accurately." I've been the rounds on that one with some exceedingly knowledgeable folk for the last fifteen years. The usual candidate is FORTRAN, and there used to be some good reasons it was true. I think that margin has been razored down until it isn't too meaningful any more, but any library that wants to compete will have to really, really get it right concerning a lot of things like error bounding, precision, error propagation and handling (yeah, I know the STL design philosophy doesn't swing that way), and then prove it on all the standard benchmark suites. About the only significant advantages I can still see in FORTRAN's favor, apart from the obvious one of the huge base of existing code, are the existence of native operators for things like exponentiation (overloading, of course, with a tiny performance penalty on some compilers), and the ease with which FORTRAN lends itself to parallel processing (and the existing compilers for doing that). I've seen one instance where a decision to switch heavy iron platforms forced a rewrite of all existing FORTRAN supercomputer code at a big research university (different loop nesting order); just modifying the FORTRAN loops probably cost more than the cost of the computer, when you factor in the time it cost all the research groups. You could hear the screams in the corridors (only a small exaggeration ;) ). I've done a lot of middlin' heavy math in C++, but it didn't have critical consequences if it wasn't up to rigorous scientific standards (well, once); a library used for actual scientific computing would have to meet those standards. I think, though, that the perception problem would still be the tougher problem, sadly. Oddly enough, scientists is usually pretty conservative folk; they like what they know. And, as I mentioned, they're often tied to particular hardware (although Boost isn't intended for the supercomputer market, any parts of it accepted into the next spec will eventually end up being used there). Anyway, that's my 0.02 Zorkmids. Reid Sweatman