Ask HN: So, what is your problem? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: So, what is your problem?

#71

Post by ajdecon » Mon, Nov 26, 2012, 8:27 PM UTC

amplitwist wrote: post #65

I work on numerical simulations, where I deal with colossal arrays of floating point numbers on hundreds or thousands of nodes. I want tools that can help with the following: 1. Visualizing code. Rendering C++ and/or Fortran as LaTeX would be very helpful for lines of code like this, where I've spent too much time tracking down misplaced parens: k1(1,1)=-Im*(Omega_minus_n*(rho13(i,j)+conjg(rho12(i,j)))-Omega_plus_n*(…

Re 3: I don't think anything like this exists yet (as you've described close to the "holy grail" of numerical languages ;-) ), but you might want to check out Julia[1] if you haven't done so yet. It doesn't do everything you want, but has decently good performance, makes it easy to call C libs (and Fortran I think), and is doing some interesting things with parallelization. Unfortunately it doesn't yet have MPI support, the performance you want, etc. but it's a very new language with an active community, and I think it has goals compatible to yours.

Re 1: As yolesaber said, most decent IDEs/editors should give you tools to deal with parens. As for pretty-printing equations: I used to have a Perl script that would convert code to LaTeX according to certain rules, but it's lost in a previous job's IP. Still, this should be reasonably achievable with a set of regexs + LaTeX assuming you use a consistent syntax throughout for your equations, without too many ambiguous cases. :)

[1] http://julialang.org/

Re: Ask HN: So, what is your problem?

#72

Post by Breefield » Mon, Nov 26, 2012, 10:29 PM UTC

peteforde wrote: post #25

Breefield wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you go :) http://balancedpayments.com

Thanks for the link! I didn't specify that it would have to work outside of the US, which is my mistake. That said, I had no idea this existed and it's definitely on my radar now. Thank you again.

I understand Balanced is trying very hard to get into CA as well, so they may be a viable solution for you soon.

Re: Ask HN: So, what is your problem?

#73

Post by amplitwist » Mon, Nov 26, 2012, 11:50 PM UTC

yolesaber wrote: post #67

amplitwist wrote: post #65

I work on numerical simulations, where I deal with colossal arrays of floating point numbers on hundreds or thousands of nodes. I want tools that can help with the following: 1. Visualizing code. Rendering C++ and/or Fortran as LaTeX would be very helpful for lines of code like this, where I've spent too much time tracking down misplaced parens: k1(1,1)=-Im*(Omega_minus_n*(rho13(i,j)+conjg(rho12(i,j)))-Omega_plus_n*(…

In regards to 1: Any decent editor should have highlighted parens matching. What do you use for coding?

Emacs, but it's still hard to do. That code excerpt is nothing compared to what I have worked with in some code I no longer I have access to; some of the formulas stretched on for about 6 lines of 80 chars each. It's not so much the unbalanced parens as it is about having the wrong thing in the denominator of a gigantic multilevel fraction.

Re: Ask HN: So, what is your problem?

#74

Post by zurn » Thu, Nov 29, 2012, 5:53 AM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #11

This isn't my problem, but some of my friends were talking about it: something like Kickstarter, but for consultants. The genius of Kickstarter is the "transactional" (in the database sense of the word, wherein a set of operations is packaged so that either all happen or none do) nature of the thing: either the money is raised, or not; and if not, it's all returned to pledgers. If the consultant gets enough pledges/w…

This is a great idea. I guess it would be more like contracting though. The ideal case would be oversubscription: Stuff that needs to be built really benefit of having several prototypes built, and the best approach selected for further development.