Back in the game: Numerics in D

Norbert Nemec Norbert at Nemec-online.de
Mon Feb 22 12:52:51 PST 2010


Indeed, I have already begun digging through the pile of changes that 
have been implemented over the past years. Most importantly, IFTI. Back 
then, this was the fundamental show stopper for expression template 
programming.

I have not looked into it in detail, that all the essentials are there 
now to write a complete prototype. The really challenging part will then 
  be to make the libary as user-friendly as possible. May aim is the 
quality of NumPy. Whether this can be done in the library, or whether in 
the long run multidimensional arrays should become part of the language 
remains to be seen.

Greetings,
Norbert


Don wrote:
> Norbert Nemec wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>> just to say "Hi" to those that might still remember my name from the 
>> good ol' times. (I just checked - I actually sent 464 messages to this 
>> list from 2004 to 2006 and none since.)
> 
> Hi! I certainly haven't forgotten you.
> 
>> I am currently considering to apply for an academic research 
>> fellowship that would allow me to work full time on the development of 
>> a numerical library for D. The core of this work would be the 
>> implementation of multi-dimensional numerical arrays and array 
>> expressions similar to what NumPy does in Python. It would remain to 
>> be seen how much can be done as a library and what should be done at a 
>> language level.
> 
> That would be pretty cool.
> 
>  Ultimately, I
>> believe D could achive support for numerical programming with the 
>> comfort, simplicity and expressiveness of Python and the performance 
>> of Fortran.
> 
> I have no doubt that that's true.
> 
> I also believe we are close to being able to implement it.
> Note that a few more pieces have been put into place since you were last 
> here. The new operator overloading scheme will be in place in the next 
> release, which will radically simplify the existing opIndex() mess.
> See also this patch:
> 
> http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3474
> 
> This is mentioned in Andrei's book, so it should appear a few compiler 
> releases from now.
> 
>> In any case, I would really love to see a strong community for 
>> numerical computing arise around D!
> 
> Me too.
> Don.



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