Which D features to emphasize for academic review article

[TJB]

On Friday, 10 August 2012 at 22:11:23 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 8/10/2012 8:31 AM, TJB wrote:
>> On Thursday, 9 August 2012 at 18:35:22 UTC, Walter Bright 
>> wrote:
>>> On 8/9/2012 10:40 AM, dsimcha wrote:
>>>> I'd emphasize the following:
>>>
>>> I'd like to add to that:
>>>
>>> 1. Proper support for 80 bit floating point types. Many 
>>> compilers' libraries
>>> have inaccurate 80 bit math functions, or don't implement 80 
>>> bit floats at
>>> all. 80 bit floats reduce the incidence of creeping roundoff 
>>> error.
>>
>> How unique to D is this feature?  Does this imply that things 
>> like BLAS and
>> LAPACK, random number generators, statistical distribution 
>> functions, and other
>> numerical software should be rewritten in pure D rather than 
>> calling out to
>> external C or Fortran codes?
>
> I attended a talk given by a physicist a few months ago where 
> he was using C transcendental functions. I pointed out to him 
> that those functions were unreliable, producing wrong bits in a 
> manner that suggested to me that they were internally 
> truncating to double precision.
>
> He expressed astonishment and told me I must be mistaken.
>
> What can I say? I run across this repeatedly, and that's 
> exactly why Phobos (with Don's help) has its own 
> implementations, rather than simply calling the corresponding C 
> ones.
>
> I encourage you to run your own tests, and draw your own 
> conclusions.

Hopefully this will help make the case that D is the best choice 
for numerical programmers. I want to do my part to convince 
economists.

Another reason to implement BLAS and LAPACK in pure D is that the 
old routines like dgemm, cgemm, sgemm, and zgemm (all defined for 
different types) seem ripe for templatization.

Almost thou convinceth me ...

TJB