> I did a lot of programming in Fortran 77 while working on my Ph.D. in
> engineering mechanics
>
>That's OK, it's not permanent damage. :-)
>
>> (1) Will Python allow me to create applications that provide a simple GUI
>> interface to something like an integrator for ODEs?
>
>No idea what an ODE is but yes Python can do simple graphics/GUIs. The
>Tkinter GUI library and friends are part of the standard library. Other tookits
>exist such as wxPython, pyGTK etc.
>
>> Does it have graphics libraries that allow one to animate the motion of
>> simple
>> objects (e.g., spheres, ellipsoids, parallelepipeds, etc.) based on the
>> results of
>> numerical simulations?
>
>Yes, you can use things like gnuplot for grpahs/chartys or more dynamic you
>can use pyGame to define your own sprites and manoevre them around the screen.
>You can also access libraries such as Scipy and R for heavyweight number
>crunching.
>
>Start with the official tutorial, supplement with some of themore basic for
>new concepts like OOP (mine if you like! :-). Once confident with vanila
>python
>look at specialist tutorials for TKinter, PyGame, Scipy, R etc.
>
>Python is well suited to your needs, obnce you have the foundation in place
>(and that should take only 2 or 3 days effort to polish up the rusty bits) the
>new stuff can be learned as needed.
>
>HTH
>
>Alan g.
>
>
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