Subject: CCL & OOP

From: "Lestaw K. Bieniasz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 1997 10:45:50 +0200 (W. Europe Daylight Time)

Tuebingen, 14.07.97

Hello, 

I think you guys miss one point: The choice of the programming language
depends on what you want to achieve. There is no "best" language (as
somebody complained) and there will never be, because there are
different languages for different purposes. So, let's try to define what 
the computational chemists may need the most.

If you need a program for individual purpose, use Fortran if you like it.
If you need a program that is expected to be very big or used by many,
and developed/extended by many, use an OOP type language, like C++, for
example. I have personally been using C for around 10 years (and I have to
say that after this experience I would never come back to Fortran!) and I
am now switching to C++. There are a few problems with standards, OK, but
I would say that OOP (and C++ in particular) is a a substantial step
forward compared to procedural languages, although it is certainly not
easy to change the way of thinking if somebody is accustomed to let's say
Fortran or pure C. But whatever are personal preferences in this matter,
see how the future of scientific programming is going to look like in the
next decade. There is an interesting article by deJong and Rip in the
(April, I think) volume of "Artificial Intelligence", where they discuss
the concept of "discovery programs". Similar concepts of "problem solving
environments" are also put forward by other authors (see
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/research/cse/pses 
and related sites and literature). In general, these predictions for the
future are strongly connected to the concept of world-wide network of
scientific programs, parallel and extensively distributed processing. 

Although I am personally not very happy about these ideas, I think you
will agree with me that this is indeed the direction in which the things
are developing. If so, and if we want our programs to be still useful 
after five years, we should start to select the proper language now.
As far as I know, the only language available at present, that 
responds to the challenges created by these future needs is JAVA.
And it is an example of an orthodox OOP-type language. As I said
I am not happy about this, because it looks I will have to start learning
something new again (no hope for having a rest), but that's the life.

Just my 0.02$.

					L.

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|                        Dr. Leslaw Bieniasz                        |
| temporary address: (3rd April 1997 - 31st August 1997)            |
|       Institut fuer Organische Chemie, Universitaet Tuebingen     |
|          Auf der Morgenstelle 18, 72076 Tuebingen, Germany.       |
|              E-mail: [email-masked]           |
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| permanent address:                                                |
| Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences,| 
| Molten Salts Laboratory, ul. Zagrody 13, 30-318 Cracow, Poland.   | 
|                   E-mail:  [email-masked]                 |
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