The Geomblog

Way back when, I had promised to do a brief post on the use of SVN (or other versioning systems) for paper writing. Writing this post reminds of all the times I've sniggered at mathematicians unaware of (or just discovering) BibTeX: I suspect all my more 'systemsy' friends are going to snigger at me for this.

All the code for my recent paper was written in MATLAB. it was convenient, especially since a lot of the prior work was in MATLAB too. I actually know almost no MATLAB, preferring to do my rapid protoptyping in C++ (yes, I'm crazy, I know).

Which brings me to the question that I know my lurking software hackers might have an answer to. If I have to invest in learning a new language for doing the empirical side of my work, what should it be ? Here are some desiderata:

• Extensive package base: I don't want to reinvent wheels if I can avoid it. In this respect, the C++ STL is great, as is Boost, and Python has PADS, as well as many nifty packages. MATLAB is of course excellent.
• Portability: I'm sure there's an exotic language out there that does EXACTLY what I need in 0.33 lines of code. But if I write code, I want to be able to put it out there for people to use, and I'd like to use it across multiple platforms. So Lua, not so great (at least in the research community) (sorry Otfried)
• Good I/O modules: if I write code, I'll often want to send output to a graph, or plot some pictures etc. Some systems (MATLAB) are excellent for graphing data.
  
• Performance: I don't want to sacrifice performance too much for ease of coding. I've always been afraid of things like Java for this reason. Of course, I'm told I'm dead wrong about this.
  

I deliberately haven't listed 'learning curve' as an option. If the language merits it, I'm willing to invest more time in switching, but obviously the benefits have to pay for the time spent. In terms of background, I'm most familiar with C++, and am a nodding acquaintance of python, and perl. I occasionally nod at MATLAB in the street when I see it, but usually cross the road to the other side if I see Java approaching. I used to be BFF with OpenGL, but then we broke up over finances (specifically the cost of GPUs).

Thoughts ?

(while I wait for actual inspiration to strike)

I just acquired an invite to Google Wave (thanks to John Moeller), and have been finding it quite intriguing (note: you can't "get" Google Wave unless you're invited, and no, I don't have any invites to give out).

Google Wave is a mysterious combination of email, chat, wikis and browser extensions that's hard to describe - you can read descriptions of it all over the web, but unless you are able to get in and start playing, it's like trying to buy wine based on text descriptions of the taste.

So far I've used it to:

• discuss an outline for next semester's seminar with my students (Topics in Graph Algorithms, for those curious)
• Start working with a collaborator on an outline for a tutorial we want to do
• set up administrative struts for our research group svn server (I've started using svn for writing papers - it's an amazing experience - more on that some other time)

By far the coolest feature of Wave for me is that you can include a LaTeX extension into any "wave"or conversation, and it automatically converts things between $$...$$ marks into latex, which makes me hopeful that it will be useful for more substantive discussions (since I often wish I had such capabilities in Skype/Google chat)

Although the preview is painfully slow, and is crippled in various ways, the potential is clearly there, and as more people get on it, it will only start getting more effective. I'm looking forward to it.

Does anyone know of good tools for plotting implicit functions ? Ideally, I'd like something that could plot functions of the form f(x,y) = 0, and even contours of the form f(x,y) = c.

(for those who aren't hip with web jargon, a bleg is a beg on a blog ;)