From: Dibya Prakash <prakash.dibya@...>
Date: 2005-05-12T10:47:41+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby vs. java?

Hi,
I definitely agree "NO VB".My preferrence would be C++.It will give u
a good mathematical support.

On 5/12/05, Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@path.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Ralf M�ller wrote:
> > On Wed, 11 May 2005 17:57:10 +0900
> > "Franz Hartmann" <porschefranz@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Hello all,
> >>
> >>just call me Franz. I study physic in Berlin, but i am from bavaria (that is
> >>in the south of germany). sorry for my bad english but foreign languages are
> >>not my strong point. i like more mathematic.
> >>
> >>I want to do a physical model calculation about the dynamics of
> >>incompressibel liquids. I am not sure which is the best programming language
> >>for this. I think about visual basic, java and ruby. I know java quite good
> >>and vb and ruby a bit. actually i wanted to do it in vb but its to powerful
> >>for me. so i am looking for something easier.
> >>
> >>can you tell me the essential differences between java and ruby? what can
> >>you do in ruby that you cannot do in java? and what about jruby? can i
> >>combine java and ruby?
> >
> >
> > Well...
> >
> > it depends on what you mean by 'the best programming language for this'?
> > Should it be fast? or have beautiful code? Should it be extensible? Do you want to rely on existing libraries?
> >
> > I did some numerical analysis in geophysics and it took 1-7 days to get the results. So, you should keep in mind how expensive you number crunching will be. Maybe a week is to long for you.
> >
> > btw: there is a 'Runge-Kutta Ruby Class' avaliable, search freshmeat
> >
> > regards
> > ralf
> 
> Ruby is working out pretty well for numerical simulations for my work,
> but that depends heavily on using C code generation to produce fast code
> to perform rk4 (Runge-Kutta 4th order) evaluations. Speeds ends up a
> factor of two slower than, say, Matlab, but that's not because of ruby,
> it's because we're not doing pure ODEs, but hybrid ODEs with state
> changes, reconfigurable dataflow, and guards that have to be checked at
> every timestep.
> 
> If you're willing either to write a core of C code or to write a code
> generator, then you can probably keep 90% or 95% of the rest of your
> code (GUI, input/output processing, file handling, etc.) in ruby and be
> happier overall.
> 
>