Hi,
I'm a lisp novice but I'm considering using lisp as part of
implementing algorithms in my research. Mostly this is
going to be stuff like numeric integration, but there are a
number of calculations that will need to be done.
Are there any potential problems or gotchas I need to worry
about trying to do numeric stuff in CL?
At the moment I'm presuming that the devlopment time will be
alot shorter than writing in Fortran and that may make up
for any loss in raw processing speed.
"QCD Apprentice" <··············@gmail.com> wrote in message
·················@news.doit.wisc.edu...
> Hi,
> I'm a lisp novice but I'm considering using lisp as part of implementing
> algorithms in my research. Mostly this is going to be stuff like numeric
> integration, but there are a number of calculations that will need to be
> done.
> Are there any potential problems or gotchas I need to worry about trying
> to do numeric stuff in CL?
You might look at foreign function interfaces -- using someone else's
already debugged numerical integration program may be even
faster than writing it yourself.
I think you may also find help in making lisp programs faster just
by asking on this newsgroup. Fast numerics depends on your
providing (otherwise optional) type declarations, and on your
using a compiler that uses the declarations.
> At the moment I'm presuming that the devlopment time will be alot shorter
> than writing in Fortran and that may make up for any loss in raw
> processing speed.
The tradeoff depends on how many times you run it and how much
you value your time spent to program/debug/ etc. Depending on
what you are doing and how well you use Lisp, and what you are
comparing it to (how good is the Fortran compiler, how good
is your Lisp compiler), the processing speed difference might
be negligible. Or not.