On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 15:03:44 +0900, Joel VanderWerf
<vjoel / path.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> David G. Andersen wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 10:52:18AM +0900, Dave Thomas scribed:
> >
...
> > A book I wish I had the time to write, but I'm swamped:
> >
> >   Using Ruby in Scientific Applications
> >    - Numerical applications
> >    - Analysis
> >    - Data Acquisition
> >    - Control
> >    - Visualization
> >    - Data archiving and retrieval
> >
> > I haven't had a chance to play with the acquisition and control
> > aspects yet, so I don't actually know what would go into this book
> > -- but I really wish I already had it on my bookshelf.  Perhaps it
> > would turn into a giant users manual for NArray, but I think there's
> > a lot more.  I promise to buy copies and hand them to my colleagues
> > and students if someone writes it. ;)
> >
> >   -Dave
> >
> 
> 
> I'd be interested in reading that book, and maybe helping out with it.
> Some more chapters of this hypothetical book that would be nice to have:
> 
>    - Simulation, modeling, random number generation
>    - Interfacing with other tools: gnuplot, Matlab, Excel, R, etc.
>    - Using ruby efficiently: extensions, mmap, narray
>    - Crafting domain-specific sublanguages for scientific apps
>    - Ruby and distributed/parallel processing
>    - Managing legacy C and Fortran code
>    - Ruby in a real-time environment?
> 
> Some folks on this list (Ara Howard and Bil Kleb come to mind) are
> eminently qualified to write on those topics.
> 

I'd really like to read this book - a year ago. Seriously, this would
be a great book that I would definitely buy. A lot of the momentum
around Ruby tends to be related to the web, it would be great for Ruby
to have momentum also for scientific / numerical tasks, similar to
Python for example.

Matt