OT: Language for the ages

[Paul Koning]

>>>>> "Gordon" == Gordon JC Pearce <gordonjcp at gjcp.net> writes:

 Gordon> Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez wrote:
 >> by the numerical scientific computing community.  I even know why,
 >> but I don't want to star a language war.
 >> 
 >> Carlos.

 Gordon> Aw go on, tell us...  I for one would love to know why, if
 Gordon> only to see if it's worth brushing up my rather rusty FORTRAN
 Gordon> "skills".

It's one of very few languages (perhaps the only one, unless you count
shiny new C++ standards) in which complex numbers are a first class
data type.  A lot of scientific computation involves complex numbers
(Fourier transform, electromagnetic field simulation, etc.), and being
able to write plain expressions instead of a tangle of function calls
is a big help.

   paul