http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/05/scientific-computings-future-can-any-coding-language-top-a-1950s-behemoth/
Scientific computing's future: Can any coding language top a 1950s
behemoth?
Cutting-edge research still universally involves Fortran; a trio of
challengers wants in.
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Includes a JPEG image of a Hollerith card for the younguns who have
never seen one.
"Julia may be the first language since Fortran created specifically with
scientific number crunching in mind."
"Fortran has been consistently regarded as the fastest language
available for numerical work, and it remains the standard used for
comparatively benchmarking supercomputers. But what does it mean for a
language to be fast?"
"Julia's published benchmarks <http://julialang.org/benchmarks/> show it
performing close to or slightly worse than C, and Fortran, as usual,
performing better than C for most tasks."
http://julialang.org/benchmarks/
"The epigraph that opens this article notwithstanding, there is a
reasonable chance that the language of choice for scientific computing
in another decade will be called "Julia.""
Discuss.
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All Things Serve the Beam
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David J. Schuller
modern man in a post-modern world
MacCHESS, Cornell University
schul...@cornell.edu
