Re: number crunching

[moon (David A. Moon)]

> Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 18:18:01 +0100
> From: Jonathan Bachrach <Jonathan.Bachrach@ircam.fr>

I don't think anyone has proposed Dylan as a scientific programming language. 
That is not the same thing as a systems programming language.  However, my 
second hand knowledge of numeric programming suggests that that community 
could benefit a lot from object-oriented and higher-order-function programming 
techniques, so scientific programming seems like an interesting direction in 
which to extend Dylan in the future.

I think this ought to be regarded as an extension, rather than something that 
is wrong with Dylan and needs to be fixed.  But then, my own opinion is that 
the trig functions in chapter 14, complex numbers, and floating point numbers 
should all be removed from the Dylan language.  Perhaps you and I are actually 
in agreement there; my reasoning is that if one isn't going to do a serious 
implementation of floating-point, one shouldn't do a half-baked job, instead 
one should not even claim to try.

That's just my own opinion, not Apple's.  But I wonder how other people on 
this list feel.  I know most people who implement Unix C numerics libraries 
don't agree with me at all: from what I've heard they evidently think a 
half-baked job is fine.

One lower-level comment about your message: you need to be more clear on the 
distinction between the language and a particular implementation of the 
language.  You are assuming that the language is implemented a certain way and 
then criticizing the language on that basis.  But how can you be sure that 
that is the only way the language will be implemented?  Better either to 
criticize one particular implementation or to argue that the language as it 
stands cannot be implemented any other way and see if everyone buys that 
argument.