Which programming language should I use?

phinds

(1) This is NOT a blog, it is a serious science forum
(2) TEXTSPEAK is not allowed. Say PLEASE, not "plz", and so forth.

As to the useability of ANY language, it depends somewhat on what you are going to use it for. Your quesion needs to be expanded.

AlephZero

After a few decades of Fortran programming, I was surprised to see that statement, so I checked, and http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4....tran/ACOS.html says it's not correct (which is what I thought). It's not correct in Fortran 90 either.

If this is a non-standard extension to Fortran, it is a ridiculous way to create buggy code, unless the argument to ACOS is a complex expression.

I don't have any problem with ACOS((2, 0)) returning a complex value, but ACOS(2) should give an "out of range" error, not a complex value that is then silently truncated back to a real value.

Krunchyman

If you need a programming language for making calculations, you could use a program like Visual Basic, which will provide a lot of functions for you to use. If you're needing to make more complex calculations, you should use a language like C++.

For physics simulations, there are programming languages designed specifically for those.

pairofstrings

Hello everyone. Sorry to jump in and ask this question.
I want to make complex calculations and plot it's graphs, should I use Matlab? Can Matlab perform complex mathematical calculations, like calculating expressions that contain inverse trigonometric functions(OP's actual question), logarithms, matrices, etc.? I know Matlab can create graphs. How about C++. I have not seen C++ make any graphs. Is it possible to plot graphs using Java/C/C++? Tell me your best language which can do things like complex mathematical calculations and plotting graphs and physics simulations, or just complex mathematical calculations and plotting graphs, in a single environment. If there's any thing like that. Thanks.

Krunchyman

Most general purpose programming languages like C++ and Java won't have those graphical features integrated into them. You'll need to download libraries such as OpenGL to work with graphs and complex visuals. As for Matlab, and other scientific programming languages, it's designed specifically for working with things like graphs.

pairofstrings

Okay. Can I even do complex mathematical calculations in Matlab along with plotting graphs of complex mathematical equations?

chiro

The basic structure in MATLAB is a matrix type of object.

The way you typically plot graphs in MATLAB is to create row vectors corresponding to your variables (like x and y), and MATLAB provides a lot of routines to generate vectors with certain values (like say for your x-axis), and defining functions is also very easy for calculating your f(x) for example.

If you want to use MATLAB, its a good idea to look up function handles, the linspace command, and the plot functions for what you have described above (functions and graphing).

pairofstrings

"Okay. Can I even do complex mathematical calculations in Matlab along with plotting graphs of complex mathematical equations?"

Is that a yes? - you mean we can do complex mathematical calculations in Matlab?

Example:
Suppose I want to draw a graph for sec θ=x + 1/4x
I want 'θ' on the y-axis and different values of 'x' on x-axis. Can I plot the graph?

I am Sorry if I am going beyond the context of what should be asked in "Programming & Comp Sci" section. But if anyone here who is good at Matlab can explain me this. That would be great. Just want to know if it's possible to plot graph of complex mathematical functions after performing complex mathematical calculations(calculations involving Calculus, Algebra, Trigonometry, Probability), both done in the Matlab software. I will be doing Digital and Analog Signal Processing and Analysis. Purpose is to analyze signals/graph and generate random signals/graph. I don't want to switch softwares and languages after finding out that it's not useful for my purpose. I only know that Matlab can do things like recognition/detection.

jtbell

If you want to ask specifically about Matlab, the place to do it is the "Math & Science Software" forum:

http://www.physicsforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=189

phiby

You can draw these graphs very easily with Matlab. Or even Octave (which is a opensource software which is similar to Matlab.

For that matter, you can draw these graphs even in Microsoft Excel or Libre Office.