Description of various languages

• Traditionally, Fortran has been the primary language of scientific computing, and, even in 2005, it remains so for many large-scale applications, such as in chemical engineering, mechanical engineering and other engineering disciplines, physics, and climate modeling.  Fortran has obtained a somewhat undeserved reputation for being too old-fashioned, not supporting modern programming structures, such as user-defined data types.  However, the Fortran 90 standard, implemented for over a decade, does allow such "object-oriented" structure, and compilers for it are widely available.  (This includes a new free, open-source "Gnu" Fortran 90 compiler, integrated with the "gcc" compiler suite.)  Furthermore, much free numerical software, primarily in Fortran, is available from Netlib.  The new standard has many intrinsic functions useful for scientific computing, including easy access to vector and matrix operations, done efficiently on parallel machines and other special machines, without having to program loops.  Unfortunately, many still think of the older, more limited Fortran 77 standard as "Fortran," and thus discount the use of Fortran.  (All Fortran 77 programs are also valid Fortran 90 and Fortran 95 programs, so there is no problem in that regard using a compiler supporting the new standard.)
• C and C++ have traditionally been "operating system" languages, originally designed for systems programming and graphics.  In fact, much, if not most commercial programming for the Microsoft Windows environment is in C++.  Also, since C++ came out in the late 1980's, before Fortran 90 compilers were available, many researchers in scientific computing who required object-oriented capabilities started using C++ instead of Fortran, and the trend has continued. 
  
• Matlab, or "MATrixLABoratory", originated with Cleve Moler as a National Science Foundation project in 1980, as an interactive system for doing matrix computations.  Now a "Mathworks" corporation product, Matlab has evolved into a general-purpose scientific computing environment.  Various "toolboxes" supply specialized capabilities, such as optimization (linear and nonlinear programming), control systems, signal processing, and an environment for mathematical modeling.  Beyond interactive computations, Matlab is a full-featured programming language, with functions and "scripts" stored in Matlab "m" files.  Such programs are easily debuggable with Matlab's built-in interactive debugger, and in some cases run efficiently.  Many scientists and engineers program new and experimental algorithms first in Matlab, later translating the programs into more efficient Fortran, C, or C++, as necessary.  Matlab's "for" loops are "interpretive," and are inefficient compared to loops in compiled programming languages such as Fortran, C, and C++.  This is particularly true if there are "nested" loops (i.e. loops within loops), and Matlab programs can therefore execute a factor of 60 slower than corresponding Fortran or C programs.
• Mathematica originated  in the late 1980's as a symbolic manipulation program, that is, as a program that automatically factors and simplifies algebraic expressions, that symbolically differentiates and integrates, etc.  Mathematica has evolved into a more general-purpose repository of mathematical knowledge, and supports both numerical and symbolic computations.   Browsing the capabilities of Mathematica is one way of becoming familiar with functions and relations in classical applied mathematics, for example.  Mathematica also has many graphical capabilities, both two- and three-dimensional.  Finally, Mathematica has general-purpose programming capabilities, admitting many programming styles, including "object-oriented" and "functional".  Mathematica is especially appropriate for us if we need to combine symbolic and numerical capabilities.  However, Mathematica programs can be even less efficient than Matlab programs.  Furthermore, for purely numerical programming, especially that involving matrix computations, and for simple graphs, Matlab may be somewhat easier to learn and use.  (A competing symbolic manipulation package, with capabilities similar to Mathematica, is Maple.  However, we deal with Mathematica, since our university has Mathematica licenses, rather than Maple licenses.)

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