05.06.06
Mathematical Programming Languages
This is my first genuine post in this Wordpress blog. Personally, I would like to set up this blog site, for some interest group personnels who wish to exchange pointers and discuss some of the functions used in our generally-used programming languages, such as C/C++, Java, Labview, MatLab and so on.
If you are interested in my introduction to these programming languages, do not hesistate to read on.
I have the above mentioned languages most of the time, but usually MatLab has been my daily dosage of medicine. MatLab, produced by The MathWorks Inc., has been renowned to be an excellent mathematical programming tool for people in the academic field, including students, lecturers as well as research staffs. The power of this language lies in the pre-packaged function scripts and toolboxes that are readily available without much compilation or programming efforts, making it very accessible to students as well as engineers. Unfortunately, the cost of purchasing a license for MatLab is not someone who would fork out just for the fun for it. Most of the time, it is targeted at industrial markets and universities.
My first encounter of Labview, developed by National Instruments, is beautiful. Unlike MatLab which is specially targeted at mathematical computations and matrices, Labview is like a virtual instrument, packaged with nice graphical interfaces allowing users to create a frontend panel, displaying the control, display and outputs while leaving the complicated “wiring computation” behind the scene. This software is used more to impress the audience than for mathematical analysis. However, still do not doubt engine behind it, as it has created a script which allows integration of MatLab codes within Labview itself. As such, complicated mathematics calculations can be performed via MatLab software, while leaving the Labview to handle the rigorous connection to the input control and output displays. Labview is also particularly useful in data acquisition, and that has been the main focus for the past many years.
I believe C/C++ needs no introduction. Though it is not as low level language as compared to the Assembly programming tool, C/C++ does require some programming knowledge before sitting down and typing away like one would do with MatLab. Users will have to write the function file, usually suffixed with a .c format before compiling it in order for the executable file to work. Today, there are so many variants of C/C++ software applications, available in both Linux and Windows platforms. Some of the popular C/C++ softwares are Microsoft Visual C and Borland C, available for Windows, and GNU GCC in Linux. However, if you are feeling constrained by the cost, there are several free sources C/C++ software applications available on the Internet.
Java was a popular tool during the early 2000s. Owned by Sun Microsystems, Java is well known for its Object-Oriented programming superiority and platform-free capability. So, irregardless of what system you might be running on, i.e. Solaris, Windows, UNIX or Linux, as long as you have Java installed on the system, you can run java applications off directly from one platform and transfer to another without the need to re-compile the source code, unlike C/C++. In terms of linear algebra operations, Java has improved the efficiency such that it is almost comparable to files coded by C these days. It is not until recently, people have started commenting Java is over-packaging its development kit until the learning process takes longer users knowing what is available in the SDK (Software Developement Kit). Nonetheless, Java, is perhaps, the only tool that is popular within the web development community.
Of these 4 main languages, as a matter of fact, if you are MatLab user, you might be interested to know that MatLab can be integrated into Labview; MatLab can also be integrated with Java and C/C++ in programming. Where Java might be the only popular code within the web development community, the fastest code still remains with C/C++ codings. Labview is more of visual entertainment. The wiring and coding behind the interface can be quite “messy”. However, these programming languages have been explicitly used in Mathematics calculations and I am sure most of the users would know at least one of them.
