From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2007-10-17T15:47:06+09:00
Subject: Re: mathematics and physics

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Joel VanderWerf wrote:
>> Jason Bornhoft wrote:
>> ...
>>> Personally, I would like to see Ruby go as far as LAPACK or BLAS.
>>
>> ...and evolve into a credible replacement for 
>> MATLAB/Simulink/Stateflow, as well. Why not.
>>
> 
> Lots of folks would like to "replace" MATLAB. I don't think Ruby and 
> MATLAB have a heck of a lot in common. And there are lots of open source 
> math packages, both numeric and symbolic. I personally prefer doing math 
> in a higher-level language than Ruby, such as R or Axiom.
> 
> In any event, I don't think the horse to beat is MATLAB any more, but 
> Mathematica. MATLAB is really a numeric processing package -- it's 
> popular in signal and image processing, but there are better tools for 
> just about everything else these days. Mathematica, on the other hand, 
> is a really first-rate hunk of code. I've never bought a license for it 
> -- I don't do enough symbolic math in my day job to justify the cost and 
> at home, I'd rather play with open source. :)

Unfortunately, a lot of people are doing (and teaching!) numerical 
simulation using Simulink/Stateflow. It's not a very elegant language, 
IMO. And it doesn't scale well to large, self-reconfiguring networks of 
components.

-- 
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407