<p>I'd recommend avoiding Richard Fitzpatrick for anything. I just read the first few pages of his book "Computational Physics" and it made me physically ill.</p>
<p>I don't know whether or not he's joking about all the things he says about programming and computer science, but I fear that not all of it is feigned. I don't think the way to address the challenges of computational science are to ignore other scientific fields and indeed to mock them, but rather than to appreciate contributions across the board.</p>
<p>Don't go learn computational physics from this guy. Find somebody who has a modern understanding of and appreciation for computation. Better yet, find somebody who at least has the sense not to write a book betraying his ignorance and prejudices. As somebody who loves both CS and Physics, I can't understand how somebody who's supposed to love learning so much can be so willfully ignorant of another field, and rather than avoid, rectify, admit, etc. it, revels in it. In a very real way reading this has disillusioned me...</p>
<p>Physicists saying that CS and Math are silly tools for Physicists to use seems to be a recurring theme in talks I've had over the years. This was the straw that broke the camel's back, though. I really have to say something about this. If you guys want to weigh in on the place of CS/SE/prog. in the computational sciences, by all means, tell me.[/rant]</p>
<p>"what’s so bad about the text that you had to make a thread about it? "</p>
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<li>His ignorance of computation, which seems - I say this to give him something of the benefit of the doubt - willfully self-imposed. He says things that are just silly - no free compiler for Fortran90, OOP is useless in scientific programming, it would make sense to implement the general power function so that small integer powers are done directly, it’s a fault of C that there is no exponentiation operator (which seems valid, until one realizes that C++ allows you to make one) etc. And all of this would have been acceptable did he not specifically chide computer scientists all the while.</li>
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<p>This is a fairly basic set of notes / book / etc. anyway, but I feel that all anybody could really learn from this is how to harbor a grudge against a field the author undoubtedly got a B in while he was in college. Just really depressing. I guess the reason I made a thread about it is that, as I said, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’ve heard this same sentiment expressed by physicists before and, to me, it seems stupid.</p>
<p>“But your discussion advises avoiding his Computational Physics course.”</p>
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<li>That’s fair. I suppose it’s not right to question his knowledge of Physics based on his attitude towards another field. Still, I wouldn’t take him for anything, if for no other reason because I would rather learn from someone with an open mind and an appetite for knowledge, rather than from someone who had already decided what he doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing.</li>
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<p>Is it super useful? I really haven’t written programs like this, but it seems like these programs lend themselves really well to just listing out the computations you have to do.</p>
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<p>C didn’t implement it because most processors don’t have an exponentiate instruction, so exponentiation would be implemented as a subroutine anyway. </p>
<p>This isn’t that big of a deal. If you want to exponentiate, just call a library function. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t your C++ operator be implemented in pretty much the same way? You are just complaining about having to type a few extra characters. Annoying, yes, but huge language flaw, nah.</p>
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<p>I skimmed the article and didn’t really notice that that much–maybe I’m not as sensitive to this as you are?</p>
<p>It’s not an article, but a ~300 page note set. And perhaps you’re not sensitive, but to pretend he knows what he’s talking about is either naive or lazy.</p>
<p>sorry i didn’t use the right word there
~my bad~</p>
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<p>what is so bad about the article? i mean the anti-OOP on principle seems silly, but being wrong about a whether there is a free fortran90 compiler is just a lil bug. I still don’t see what’s so terrible about the .pdf.</p>
<p>I’ve written C++ OOP code for 20 years, and I can see why a scientific programmer might not choose it. OOP is great for apps and UI, but, as silence said, it seem like scientific programs are about computation and formulas, and speed is supreme. </p>
<p>As for the chiding, I used to get that from my ex, that I didn’t have a real profession, but I laughed all the way to the bank. :)</p>
<p>It’s just his attitude. I suppose as far as technical content is concerned, it’s passable. I just think that something anti-intellectual is betrayed in his presentation and that aspiring computational scientists don’t need to have this mindset held up as an example of correct thinking. Textbooks and extended notes sets like this do a lot to shape the future of a field, and I think we probably need to move beyond the idea that physicists are better at everything than everybody else.</p>