[Edu-sig] Re: Advice: is python suitable?

[Peter Bowyer]

Hello Doug (and the list),

First, thanks to all of you for your feedback so far - it's much appreciated!

At 15:58 07/10/2004, you wrote:
>It looks like the course is more focused on programming the mathematical 
>aspects of the physics, and not so much on visualizing what is going on, 
>except for maybe a plot of the numbers.  It is more about creating 
>simulations for a physicist rather than a student.
>
>So that means for the course you wouldn't for example need to use 3D to 
>visualize a simulation.

Agreed.  I used VPython once last year to do a simulation of the Coriolis 
effect and found it to be very easy to use, if the graphics were a little poor.

>You could get through the course just fine using the Python module 
>numarray (for matrix algebra) and matplotlib for plotting:
>
>But you should definitely check out Java as well.  This library is 
>specifically designed for creating physics simulations:
>http://www.opensourcephysics.org/
>http://developers.coedit.net/ComputerSimulation

Thanks for the links.  I've never done any Java programming so it'd be a 
bigger step away from what I'm used to (most prior experience has been PHP 
or very basic C), but for the teaching material (if I get to do this as my 
project) it looks more suitable than Python.

Regards,
Peter

-- 
Maple Design - quality web design and programming
http://www.mapledesign.co.uk