Subject: Programming language

From: Mihaly Mezei <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 18:49:00 -0500

We had plenty of postings, so one more should not hurt too much :) .

First, let's remenber that the origial posting was asking for suggestions
that applies to all chemistry majors. Since theorist are not an
overwhelming majority, the issue of Fortran vs C/C++/Java is not too
relevant to the original posting. For the general chemistry (or
science) student, I would tend to agree with the suggestion of 
Prof. Kimberley Cousins: Matlab or Mathematica, or Maple and the
like. These all include the basic programming elements (including
graphics in most cases!) without the more computer-specific hassle (like
format statements).

On the Fortan vs object oriented language issue I would only venture to
suggest that it helps to have a foundation of the basic programming
elements before getting into OO stuff - once you are writing a 'method',
it still has to be a straight program.

Mihaly Mezei, Dept. of Physiology & Biophysics, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
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