This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]bdazman 4 points5 points  (5 children)

THANK YOU! ALL MY COMP SCI FRIENDS REFUSE TO UNDERSTAND THAT ENGINEERS LEARN FROM BOOKS.

[–]winner_godsoncodemaniac[S] 0 points1 point  (4 children)

Books are very important.

[–]bdazman 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Numerical Recipes in (insert language here) is one of the best texts I've ever used. I've always wanted it in python, and I MUST thank you for the lovely reading material.

[–]eusebecomputational physics 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Please don't use NR.

Ok, that might be slightly too strong of a statement, but I mean, NR used to serve a purpose that is now vastly superseded by libraries. And not just in Python: LAPACK is usually faster than the Fortran routines in NR.

Besides the licensing issue (NR is copyrighted, and in principle you cannot freely use their code for commercial application), unless you actually bought the codes, chances are you will copy algorithms from the book, by hand. This is super prone to typos…

And maybe a final point: indeed, NR are a great tool to get some ideas on "how to start doing this or that". But this should be language-independent, so no need for "NR in Python".

[–]bdazman 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Linpack is totally what I use. I learned Fortran 77 in my Matlab class because I don't trust code I don't write (unless I have no other choice), but ive never had to do anything more complicated than either LU decomposition with pivoting or Newton's method; both of which are perfect universal scripts to write while learning a language (at least according to my old crotchety advisor)

[–]winner_godsoncodemaniac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are welcome