As far I know the Smalltalk model for numbers is much better than in 
C++ or other typed languages.

	Try 10000 factorial in squeak then try 10000 factorial/ 99999 factorial

You can have a look at the Book of Didier Besset: Numerical Methods in 
Smalltalk and Java and asks
some questions directly to him. All the code has been ported in Squeak 
and even improved during camp Smalltalk.

As you see most of the time of the first expression is spent while 
printing the number.

To get started with Smalltalk take Smalltalk by Example available for 
free on my web page and read it. :)
Online Free Books at 
http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/WebPages/FreeBooks.html

You can also come at the ESUG conference www.esug.org at the end of 
August and ask some volunteers to help you getting started because a 
mentor has no rpice when starting in Smalltalk.


Stef

On Saturday, July 26, 2003, at 12:08 PM, Alexander Klein wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I'm currently looking for a sensible environment to do scientific 
> computing
> for my PhD thesis that I hope to start in October.
>
> Once again, I came across Squeak that I had already considered two 
> years
> ago before deciding for C++.
>
> Today I feel that C++ was the right decision as far as performance is
> concerned, but there are a lot of things that I don't like about C++ 
> and I
> think Smalltalk could be a better choice.
>
> The general idea is to use Squeak for visualization purposes and
> statistics, while the really hard work is done by an external kernel
> written in C or C++.
>
> I spent yesterday messing around with the Squeak environment and I 
> have a
> few questions:
>
> 1. I was really glad to see that there is a foreign function interface,
> since I need to do really severe numbercrunching. Has anyone already 
> used
> the FFI to make FFTW (http://www.fftw.org) library calls?
>
> 2. I got the impression that Squeak (Or is it Smalltalk in general?) 
> is a
> little limited as far as floating point numbers are concerned. Is this
> really the case, and if so, what can I do to get the equivalent of 
> doubles
> or long doubles?
>
> 3. Since I'm used to reading plain text files, I found the system 
> browser
> really confusing. Also, although I think I understand the general 
> ideas, I
> have a really hard time reading Smalltalk source. Is there anything 
> like
> 'Smalltalk in two weeks for C++ programmers'?
>
> Best regards,
>
> 	Alex
>
>
>
>



Open Source Smalltalks: http://www.squeak.org, 
http://www.gnu.org/software/smalltalk/smalltalk.html
Free books for Universities at 
http://www.esug.org/sponsoring/promotionProgram.html