More on semantics of opPow: return type

[bearophile]

Lars T. Kyllingstad:

> I searched for FORTRAN code because that's more or less equivalent to 
> searching for numerical code. And I think D's "target audience" is 
> anyone who needs a fast, close-to-the-metal programming language. This 
> definitely includes the scientific community. (There are several of the 
> regulars on this NG who use D for scientific work.)

I agree, if D plays well its cards it can be used by users of the numerical computing group too.

I was hoping for the language Fortress to be used for such purposes, because it has several features good for numerical computing, but recently I've seen that for now it's planned to run on the JavaVM (where there are no arrays of structs, this is a significant disadvantage. The structs inside methods are less necessary because recently they have added to HotSpot an escape analysis that works for real), and more importantly I've seen its type system and other things are quite complex, maybe too much complex for the typical programmer scientist.

So I think Fortran, Python, and C (and C++) look like the most useful for those purposes. D will have to work a lot to be appreciated more than Python for those purposes, because there are many scientific libs that can be used with Python (NumPy, SciPy, SAGE, MatPlotLib, BioPython, and bindings for almost everything else).

Bye,
bearophile