Re: Scientific computing newbie

[elw@stderr.org]

> gnwiii@gmail.com wrote:
> > The free packages mentioned above use lisp, C, C++, and Fortran, so if 
> > you are interested in the internal workings of these, you will need 
> > some basic skills with all 4 languages as well as tools such as bison 
> > and yacc or antlr.  Scheme (a lisp dialect), however, is the place to 
> > start learning programming concepts (look at MIT's introductory 
> > courses).
> Thank you George, and thank you David.
>
> So I should be able to write raw programs "naturally"... I am learning 
> Scheme at present with SICP. Maybe I should go on with it and grasp some 
> more languages. Easier said than done, I am going to put those into 
> practice.


People who have actually worked through SICP, and who also are familiar 
with at least half of the tools George mentioned, are incredibly rare and 
are highly valued (justifiably so) by any project director with a bit of 
sense.

Just knowing about SICP, R, Octave, and a bit of C/C++/Fortran puts 
someone at the top of the pool, IMHO.

--e