Hi Chris.&nbsp; I would be interested in discussing this at length.&nbsp; I&#39;ve tended to specialise in Java and like yourself, have a passion for mathematics.&nbsp; <br><br>Perhaps we should get together sometime - perhaps over a beer or coffee or something similar?&nbsp; I also have a close friend who is a maths wiz and has used Java extensively who may also be interested in the discussion.
<br><br>J<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Dec 5, 2007 11:02 AM, Chris O&#39;Halloran &lt;<a href="mailto:cmoman@gmail.com">cmoman@gmail.com</a>&gt; wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I am looking for some thoughts/opinions on the merits of these two languages.<br><br>Over the years I book a few books on Java including<br>Java in Nutshell<br>Java Foundation Class<br>Java for Scientist and Engineers<br>
<br>The latter being the most useful to me.<br>However, I&#39;ve never really got the hang of how it all works. &nbsp;I don&#39;t<br>have a formal programming background<br><br>In recent times, I&#39;ve come across Python and lately stumbled upon
<br>SciPy,ipython, NumPy and &nbsp;<a href="http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net" target="_blank">matplotlib.sourceforge.net</a>. I&#39;ve also<br>noticed that Python has PyQt that enables you to use the Qt and poss<br>KDE for widgets and gui interface. &nbsp;KDE is the desktop of choice for
<br>me and QT Designer are all &quot;sudo apt-get install &quot; away.<br><br>Both Python and Java are cross platform which a plus.<br><br>What I would like to do is put together small applications often using<br>complex numbers and array for the engineering work that I do.
<br>Sometimes importing csv text files containing data from measurment<br>devices.<br><br>I have always thought Java was the tool for this but lately, I&#39;ve<br>noticed how easy it is to make things work with Python. especially the
<br>interactive &quot;try a line of code, did it do what you wanted?, no, try<br>this, ah, that works&quot;<br><br>I&#39;m thinking that Python might provide the fast feed back approach<br>that gets you enthused about actually coding than the steper learning
<br>curve of a more comprehensive language and not actually knowing where<br>to start with a gui or even just how to get the IDE to use the<br>classpath you want.<br><br>I&#39;d be interested if people had thoughts or comments on the merits.
<br><br>Cheers<br>_______________________________________________<br>wlug mailing list | <a href="mailto:wlug@list.waikato.ac.nz">wlug@list.waikato.ac.nz</a><br>Unsubscribe: <a href="http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug" target="_blank">
http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>James Pluck<br>PalmOS Ergo Sum<br>&quot;Dear IRS: I would like to cancel my subscription.<br>Please remove my name from your mailing list...&quot;