On 8/11/12 7:33 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
[snip]
Allow me to insert an opinion here. This post illustrates quite well how
opinionated our community is (for better or worse).
The OP has asked a topical question in a matter that is interesting and
also may influence the impact of the language to the larger community.
Before long the thread has evolved into the familiar pattern of a debate
over a minor issue on which reasonable people may disagree and that's
unlikely to change. We should instead do our best to give a balanced
high-level view of what D offers for econometrics.
To the OP - here are a few aspects that may deserve interest:
* Modeling power - from what I understand econometrics is
modeling-heavy, which is more difficult to address in languages such as
Fortran, C, C++, Java, Python, or the likes of Matlab.
* Efficiency - D generates native code for floating point operations and
has control over data layout and allocation. Speed of generated code is
dependent on the compiler, and the reference compiler (dmd) does a
poorer job at it than the gnu-based compiler (gdc) compiler.
* Convenience - D is designed to "do what you mean" wherever possible
and simplify common programming tasks, numeric or not. That makes the
language comfortable to use even by a non-specialist, in particular in
conjunction with appropriate libraries.
A few minuses I can think of:
- Maturity and availability of numeric and econometrics library is an
obvious issue. There are some libraries (e.g.
https://github.com/kyllingstad/scid/wiki) maintained and extended
through volunteer effort.
- The language's superior modeling power and level of control comes at
an increase in complexity compared to languages such as e.g. Python. So
the statistician would need a larger upfront investment in order to reap
the associated benefits.
Andrei
