Re: What language for mathematical applications?

plasticsunrise@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

I plan to build some Windows based GUI applications for educational
mathematics (K12) and also for more advanced math (think numerical
packages like matlab or cas like mathematica).

I'm not sure what's the best programming language/framework to handle
this. I was thinking about C# and .NET, do you have a better advice?

I'd split the problem up into doing the GUI and doing the back end.

For the GUi use whatever language/system you are most comforable with
(including graphics) -- for me that would be (Dolphin) Smalltalk, but
of course you may have different preferences.

For the backend I would first think of trying to "borrow" an existing
mathematical application such as GNU Octave.

If, for whatever reason, I couln't find anything suitable, then I would
have to write my own. For that I would want something in which it
would be no more difficult than it /had/ to be to create complex
mathematical abstractions. That would definitely rule out Java and the
mainline .NET languages (though the ML-like language F# might be an
interesting choice). Actually, for this, my own choice would be
Smalltalk again, but other sensible choices would be one of the Lisp
family or a functional language such as ML, Haskell, or [O]Caml.

-- chris
.

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