[boost] Re: Boost Mathematicians

From: Deane Yang (deane_yang_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-06-03 09:19:05

Thorsten Ottosen wrote:
> "Reid Sweatman" <drunkardswalk_at_[hidden]> wrote in message
> news:!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAAAQ16IR/xA0BGKJURFU1QAAAKJAAAQAAAArLDup9m3ck+fnQ8diyZEOwEAAAAA_at_earthlink.net...
> 
> |  Oddly enough, scientists is usually pretty
> | conservative folk; they like what they know.
> 
> Is that so odd? Yesterday I talked with a matematician here in Sydney about Fortran.
> He uses Fortran because it is good enough for what he is doing. It would probably take quite some
> time for him to learn C++, so why should he?
> 

Agreed. It's the newcomers that we want to snare, before they've
been indoctrinated into Fortran. New mathematicians tend to
have at least some computer science training, so they will be looking
for more than Fortran to write their code in. The competition will
in fact be in the other direction, from languages like Ocaml.