Re: Is Forth suitable for heavy scientific computation?

gaussianum wrote:
I do a lot of mathematical and physical calculations on my computer,
and the idea that variables are somewhat secondary in a language like
Forth makes me think that it is probably not as good for this kind of
application as Fortran or C. Am I wrong? I really like the language
itself, the power and simplicity that it conveys, but would it be
appropriate for writing a spaceflight simulator for example?


What do you mean by "heavy"? Are you talking about number crunching that takes a long time, or do you simply mean large, complex programs? The answer to both might be "yes".

Forth allows you to create a meta-language that is well-suited for your application, whether it happens to be a spaceflight simulator, or quantum mechanics calculations. Some examples of scientific programming in Forth may be found at

http://ccreweb.org/software/kforth/kforth4.html

Incidentally, I used the launching of the space shuttle as an example of Forth coding in my tutorial on Forth programming for scientists and engineers, which may be found at

http://ccreweb.org/documents/programming/programming.html


--
Krishna Myneni
.

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