[Tutor] Hi

[William Ray Wing]

> On Apr 11, 2015, at 8:32 AM, Vick <vick1975 at orange.mu> wrote:
> 

[byte]

> However I recently talked to a guy online and he told me the following,
> which actually intrigued and surprised me:
> 
> "The vast majority of numerical codes in science, including positional
> astronomy, are written in Fortran and C/C++.  If you wish to use these codes
> in minority and less efficient languages such as Python and VBA, learning to
> translate this code into those languages is a skill you will have to
> acquire."
> 
> The "codes" in question are referring to a query I posed to him regarding
> the GUST86 theory on the computational position of Uranus' natural
> satellites authored by Laskar and Jacobson in 1987. The "code" is readily
> downloadable in Fortran at the IMCCE ftp site.
> 
> But his statement is insinuating that Python is inferior to Fortran as a
> mathematical tool and that all of the scientific community prefers to use
> Fortran.
> 
> My question is simple: Is he right or wrong?
> 
> 

He is probably right, but only because most large scientific codes have historical roots that date back to the days when FORTRAN was the only language readily available on the computers scientists used.  Even today, FORTRAN compilers can frequently optimize typical scientific code to tighter (faster) executable code than the compilers for other, more modern, richer languages.  HOWEVER, that said, more and more scientific code is being written with Python as the organizing language which calls mathematical libraries written in FORTRAN.  Libraries like numpy make heavy use of FORTRAN arrays, while allowing the scientific programmer to concentrate on the higher levels of the science being modeled.

Bill

> 
> Thanks
> 
> Vick
> 
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