Program Translation - Nov. 14, 2013

[E.D.G.]

"E.D.G." <edgrsprj at ix.netcom.com> wrote in message 
news:jcKdnQiu1ZxguxvPnZ2dnUVZ_qmdnZ2d at earthlink.com...
> "E.D.G." <edgrsprj at ix.netcom.com> wrote in message 
> news:ro-dnch2dPtbRhnPnZ2dnUVZ_rSdnZ2d at earthlink.com...

Etgtab FORTRAN project
Perl speed comparison

       This Etgtab FORTRAN computer program related effort is progressing 
much better than I thought possible.  Here is some information on the 
project plus a status report.

       The Etgtab program appears to be highly unique.  And under the right 
conditions it might be highly valuable to the international scientific 
community.  So, what we are attempting to do is get it translated into some 
modern language that researchers around the world can have their own 
programmers easily modify for their specific uses.


      The first step is to get someone to actually prepare the new code. 
And if it were up to me I would stay with FORTRAN.

       It appears that my retired programming colleague is going to be 
willing to do the work since he has the program already partly translated. 
But he will only prepare a True BASIC translation.

       In order for him to finish the True BASIC version we would need a 
modern FORTRAN version of the program that my research colleague can 
decipher.  And it appears that there are some people or groups that are 
willing to help make that conversion.  He can hopefully work with them to 
get any details settled.


       We would then like to merge that True BASIC version of program with 
an already existing True BASIC program and then get things organized so that 
the output data can be displayed on charts.

       Personally, I don't like the way that True BASIC draws charts for 
Windows computers.  And although my colleague has permission to put chart 
drawing routines in the program we also plan to use a different procedure. 
I myself will create a Perl language program that can call an exe version of 
the True BASIC program and have it generate the necessary data.  Perl can 
then plot the data on a chart.  That doesn't take long.

       We will then make those Perl chart generation code available to the 
Python programmers and any other interested parties to see if they would 
like to create a Python (or whatever) program that can do the same thing.

       Of course, everything could be done using FORTRAN.  However since 
this is all volunteer work we need to go with whatever language the people 
actually doing the work are willing to work with.


PERL SPEED COMPARISON

       Some of the early discussions leading to this point involved 
calculation speed comparisons for Perl and Python.  The table on the 
following Web page contains some interesting speed comparisons between 
various programming languages.  They are all compared to the speed it takes 
a "C" language program to run the tests.

http://julialang.org/

       For comparing Perl with Perl I ran the following program.  And I 
would expect that the same time differences might also be seen if standard 
Python were used though each individual speed might run faster than Perl.

print 'start', "\n";
     for (1..100000000){$x = 2/3};
print 'end', "\n";
sleep 10;

8 seconds - On a 64 bit Windows 8 fast quad core 64 bit computer with plenty 
of memory running the latest version of ActiveState 64 bit Perl there was an 
8 second delay between when it printed "start" and "end."

20 seconds - On a 32 bit Vista fairly fast dual core 64 bit computer with 
plenty of memory running ActiveState 32 bit Perl 5.10.0.1005 there was a 20 
second delay between the "start" and "end."

36 seconds- On a 32 bit XP moderate speed single core computer (don't know 
if it is 32 or 64 bit) using a software program that makes it work like a 
dual core system plus plenty of memory running ActiveState 32 bit Perl 
5.10.0.1005 there was a 36 second delay between "start" and "end."