Q: Squeak and scientific applications

Alexander Klein alexander_klein_uni at web.de
Sat Jul 26 19:42:19 UTC 2003


Hi,

first of all thank you for your answers. I spent another afternoon playing
with the system browser and the confusion has become a bit less.


At 13:14 Uhr +0200 26.07.2003, Marcus Denker wrote:

>There is a tutorial by Giovanni Giorgi for Java programmers:
>  http://daitanmarks.sourceforge.net/or/squeak/squeak_tutorial.html

I read it, it's a nice introduction, thanks.


At 16:10 Uhr +0200 26.07.2003, Stephane Ducasse wrote:
>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

Oh, I see. Bignums like the ones in CLISP. Cool.

>To get started with Smalltalk take Smalltalk by Example available for
>free on my web page and read it. :)

I found this today on the ESUG-CD and will print it on Monday.

>You can have a look at the Book of Didier Besset: Numerical Methods in
>Smalltalk and Java and asks
>some questions directly to him.

Ok, I'll keep that in mind.

>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.

Thank you for the invitation, but late in August I'll be preparing a
presentation for a Congress on Neurophysiology.


At 19:06 Uhr +0200 26.07.2003, Joshua 'Schwa' Gargus wrote:

>Not that I'm aware of.  However, I'm currently writing an interface to
>(parts of) LAPACK and BLAS, so this type of interface is feasible.
>You can use either FFI or write your own VM plugin.

Ok, I think I will try the FFI first.

>> 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.

>Can you be a bit more specific about your impression?

Obviously, I was just wrong. I got the impression because Float as
described in Goldberg/Robson seems to be something else than double in C,
and when I wrote my last mail I had not yet discovered the comments in the
system browser.

I still have a hard time finding my way through the many classes, but at
least I am beginning to get something like a general overview.

By the way, is it possible that the System Browser for MVC-projects misses
at least the two rightmost buttons? I'm just asking, because for Morphic
projects, there are two more buttons, and it seems that those are present
in MVC, too, but get pushed beyond the right border of the window.

>Squeak Quick Reference
>[snipped]

Ok, I'll have a look at it later.

I will keep playing and see how far I get.

Again, thank you for your kind replies.

	Alex




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