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Use of Math Languages and Packages in Research?
CEHT asks: "As a research programmer at the university, I have encountered numerous times when I need to choose which language(s) or package(s) to use for different projects. Tradeoffs and performance issues have to be considered: results from one package may be more compatible with the data from other researchers, another package may find the solution faster and use less resources, and so forth. Maple,
Matlab, Magma, and Mathematica
are among the most well-known packages. Libraries such as IMSL is also popular. Of course, there are smaller (and mostly free) packages that tend to target specific types of problem, such as LiDIA, Singular, and LAPACK.
The question is, how useful are these [and other] math packages? Do researchers use only one or two packages for most of their projects? Or do people like to mix things a little by pulling the strength of different packages together to solve a math problem? If not, do researchers write C/C++ programs and use GMP or Matpack to solve math problems?"
I use `expr`.
What a wonderful idea! Perl is so terribly simple to read that it *needs* some highly complex math thrown in to keep us from getting bored.
do not read this line twice.
About keeping important bits of paper. I have MathCAD Pro 2000, and an upgrade to MathCAD 2001, both of which set me back nicely, (though I usually need Mathematica) and when I switched computers in December it was all useless because I can't find the serial number to my MC Pro 2000 disk.