Re: [Haskell-cafe] Haskell for Physicists
Khudyakov Alexey wrote:
В сообщении от Среда 30 сентября 2009 22:25:14 вы написали:
Khudyakov Alexey wrote:
В сообщении от 30 сентября 2009 21:42:57 edgar@ymonad.com написал:
Hi,
I will give a seminar to physicists at USP (Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil) university and they asked me for a good title, something that can attract physicists. Anyone has some suggestions? (Will be a seminar about the use of Haskell to substitute C or Fortran in a lot of tasks, and how it can be used in some problems instead of Matlab, Mathematica, etc.)
What area of physics? They all face somewhat different problems from computation.
Could you publish your slides from seminar (if any) and even if they are in Spanish (nothing is impossible for man with a dictionary)
I am also interested in seeing the slides (being a physicist myself). Also, that'd be portuguese, not spanish, that would be spoken in Brazil. The dictionary comment still applies though :)
I suppose you aimed for cafe but missed. (:
Yep, sure did. I just hit `reply' assuming haskell-cafe was in the reply-to. I do that more often than not it seems. Going back to the OP, what area of physics, and how on earth are you going to convert years of fortran users to haskell? I mean, in particle physics (were I came from) it seems as though only recently have they moved from fortran to C++ (note: C was skipped). There are things written in python (like Athena) but, well..., they are unreliable crap (I do like python though). In fact, when I was in undergraduate, not 4 years ago, a PhD student was writing his big QCD project in fortran from the ground up. I'm not even familiar enough with fortran to attempt such a thing (I would have used C). Case in point, I think there are some areas of physics that exist as a communal project (i.e. experimental particle physics) and because of this, you are limited to the tools and data used by your peers (Athena, Geant4, etc...). It is really hard to introduce anything new. So I guess my advice would be to avoid Haskell as a 'replacement' for anything to a physicist (including mathematica -- which I never liked myself). They will immediately ignore you. Approach it as a new tool, and focus on what it can do that software-x can't. That was my take on it though, so it may be a bit incorrect and/or biased. -Jack
В сообщении от Среда 30 сентября 2009 23:08:02 вы написали:
Yep, sure did. I just hit `reply' assuming haskell-cafe was in the reply-to. I do that more often than not it seems. Going back to the OP, what area of physics, and how on earth are you going to convert years of fortran users to haskell? I mean, in particle physics (were I came from) it seems as though only recently have they moved from fortran to C++ (note: C was skipped). There are things written in python (like Athena) but, well..., they are unreliable crap (I do like python though). In fact, when I was in undergraduate, not 4 years ago, a PhD student was writing his big QCD project in fortran from the ground up. I'm not even familiar enough with fortran to attempt such a thing (I would have used C). Case in point, I think there are some areas of physics that exist as a communal project (i.e. experimental particle physics) and because of this, you are limited to the tools and data used by your peers (Athena, Geant4, etc...). It is really hard to introduce anything new. So I guess my advice would be to avoid Haskell as a 'replacement' for anything to a physicist (including mathematica -- which I never liked myself). They will immediately ignore you. Approach it as a new tool, and focus on what it can do that software-x can't.
I'm particle physicist too. And sometimes I think that it would be better if they stay with fortran. Object-disoriented which is done in C++ scares me. Random segfaults in ROOT, or even worse segfault loops... It's possible to use safety as argument for haskell. Type safety, no segfaults. As for existing code there are two strategies. First is to dump all code into Geneva lake. There are environmental concerns of course. And it's difficult to throw away "tested" code. Second one - do not touch it and use haskell for small isolated tasks. It's easier to do this in smaller experiments. I use haskell to process experimental data with reasonable success. Code is much cleaner and easier to understand that C++ code. In fact I just reworded your statement
Khudyakov Alexey wrote:
В сообщении от Среда 30 сентября 2009 23:08:02 вы написали:
Yep, sure did. I just hit `reply' assuming haskell-cafe was in the reply-to. I do that more often than not it seems. Going back to the OP, what area of physics, and how on earth are you going to convert years of fortran users to haskell? I mean, in particle physics (were I came from) it seems as though only recently have they moved from fortran to C++ (note: C was skipped). There are things written in python (like Athena) but, well..., they are unreliable crap (I do like python though). In fact, when I was in undergraduate, not 4 years ago, a PhD student was writing his big QCD project in fortran from the ground up. I'm not even familiar enough with fortran to attempt such a thing (I would have used C). Case in point, I think there are some areas of physics that exist as a communal project (i.e. experimental particle physics) and because of this, you are limited to the tools and data used by your peers (Athena, Geant4, etc...). It is really hard to introduce anything new. So I guess my advice would be to avoid Haskell as a 'replacement' for anything to a physicist (including mathematica -- which I never liked myself). They will immediately ignore you. Approach it as a new tool, and focus on what it can do that software-x can't.
I'm particle physicist too. And sometimes I think that it would be better if they stay with fortran. Object-disoriented which is done in C++ scares me. Random segfaults in ROOT, or even worse segfault loops...
It's possible to use safety as argument for haskell. Type safety, no segfaults.
As for existing code there are two strategies.
First is to dump all code into Geneva lake. There are environmental concerns of course. And it's difficult to throw away "tested" code.
Second one - do not touch it and use haskell for small isolated tasks. It's easier to do this in smaller experiments. I use haskell to process experimental data with reasonable success. Code is much cleaner and easier to understand that C++ code.
In fact I just reworded your statement _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Root has pissed me off more times than I can remember. I've also done lots of Geant4 work (my thesis work actually), and that is a steaming pile of OO confusion. Geant4 is getting close to 40MB of source, and it is still nothing more than a library of interfaces to interfaces to .... to the CLHEP C++ library. It is OOP gone mad. Not to mention that if anyone asks for a feature implemented, it gets implemented. There are features in the geant4 library that I'm sure even geant4 developers don't know about. Functional programming should be the to-go tool in physics, but it isn't. Somewhere down the road, someone thought OOP was the messiah and worthy of a fortran replacement. I fail to see the logic in this. If anything I would start by scolding the physicists in the room on their programming practices. Then introduce Haskell as you wish. If I were to give a talk about programming to physicists, the first words out of my mouth would probably be "I'm embarrassed by you all." Ok I'm done, I think you all get my point. A comp-sci minor should be required for every physics major. -jack
participants (2)
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Jack Norton -
Khudyakov Alexey