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Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

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Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#31

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #15
na85 wrote: post #2

The point of this submission being....? The fact that someone runs statistics calculations in Fortran (a language whose most recent standard is dated 2008) should be shocking only to the recent generation of coders who have become "code hipsters." The guys looking for the Next Big Thing™ in programming languages. These are the guys trying to cram Python into every possible goddamned use case, whether that be embedded…

Um, people have been doing high performance numeric and scientific computing in python for over 15 years now. The truth is, for a lot of numeric computing, you're better off using python, which calls fortran or c code to do the heavy lifting. Fortran can run very fast. If all you need to do is numerical calculations, that might be enough. But that's never all you need to do: you need to preprocess your input data, or…

I used to work for a physicist who (still) codes in Fortran. I tried to show him Python. He said, "That's nice, use Python if that's what you like." But he always used fortran. It wasn't usually a big deal to translate between the two. He was giving out the big ideas, we were making use of them. To this day, he is still doing physics, still using fortran, still publishing papers.

Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#32

Post by sampo »

cing wrote: post #9
na85 wrote: post #2

The point of this submission being....? The fact that someone runs statistics calculations in Fortran (a language whose most recent standard is dated 2008) should be shocking only to the recent generation of coders who have become "code hipsters." The guys looking for the Next Big Thing™ in programming languages. These are the guys trying to cram Python into every possible goddamned use case, whether that be embedded…

Is Fortran actually the best choice for this application? I don't know how heavy the calculations are for sports analytics, but I'm guessing it's less advanced than scientific simulations. Who cares how numerically efficient your code is if you use 10x the lines than a modern language and spend half your time struggling to maintain it.

> Is Fortran actually the best choice for this application?

Fortran is like fast, typed, compiled Matlab (with smaller standard library, but a lot of numerical libraries available all over internet).

Nut yes, exploratory data analysis, something interactive like NumPy + Matplotlib, Matlab or R might be better.

But NumPy + matplotlib is kinda painful to set up first to be interactive, R the language is wonky, and Matlab cost a lot of money (and the free alternative, Octave, has much more limited graphics, and they are kind of ugly, too).

Of course, Fortran has no graphing capabilities, so one needs some tool for that anyway.

Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#33

Post by asperous »

na85 wrote: post #2

The point of this submission being....? The fact that someone runs statistics calculations in Fortran (a language whose most recent standard is dated 2008) should be shocking only to the recent generation of coders who have become "code hipsters." The guys looking for the Next Big Thing™ in programming languages. These are the guys trying to cram Python into every possible goddamned use case, whether that be embedded…

Python is actually rather old at this point, dating back to 1991. But yes, I see your point: people treating languages like they do cellphones, expecting a new one every 2 years-- confused as to why you have still use that 5 year old junker (whose battery lasts a month).

Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#34

Post by nhebb »

na85 wrote: post #21
nhebb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't with the programming language; it with his algorithms. Sagarin's rankings are often an outlier, frequently in ways that just don't make sense.

Well then his algorithms would still be wonky if he wrote them in Python or Haskell.

Well, that's my point. When I read the interview, it sounded like his heart just wasn't in it anymore.

Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#35

Post by slurry »

na85 wrote: post #2

The point of this submission being....? The fact that someone runs statistics calculations in Fortran (a language whose most recent standard is dated 2008) should be shocking only to the recent generation of coders who have become "code hipsters." The guys looking for the Next Big Thing™ in programming languages. These are the guys trying to cram Python into every possible goddamned use case, whether that be embedded…

should be shocking only to the recent generation of coders who have become "code hipsters." The guys looking for the Next Big Thing™ in programming languages.

This was written in 1983: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html

It contains among other things the sentiment "Unix is a glorified video game."

Most of the things you are using right now used to be hipster.

Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#36

Post by [deleted] »

jofer wrote: post #14
kyllo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, anyone who has installed numpy, matplotlib, etc has probably noticed that you need a Fortran compiler to build the native extensions...

Actually, you don't. A fortran compiler is optional, and used mostly for f2py and I think(?) for the LAPACK bindings. (The fortran bindings are more efficient than the C bindings for reasons I don't remember at the moment.) Numpy's (and matplotlib's, actually) core is written in C. Scipy is a different story, however. A lot of scipy's internals are written in fortran. That having been said, fortran is a _very_ nice l…

[deleted]

Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#37

Post by sampo »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #15
na85 wrote: post #2

The point of this submission being....? The fact that someone runs statistics calculations in Fortran (a language whose most recent standard is dated 2008) should be shocking only to the recent generation of coders who have become "code hipsters." The guys looking for the Next Big Thing™ in programming languages. These are the guys trying to cram Python into every possible goddamned use case, whether that be embedded…

Um, people have been doing high performance numeric and scientific computing in python for over 15 years now. The truth is, for a lot of numeric computing, you're better off using python, which calls fortran or c code to do the heavy lifting. Fortran can run very fast. If all you need to do is numerical calculations, that might be enough. But that's never all you need to do: you need to preprocess your input data, or…

> you need to preprocess your input data, or deserialize it, normalize it, join it or transform it based on some rdbms data, then you do your calculations, and then you need to graph it, serialize it, etc.

In large scale number crunching, like climate models, numerical weather prediction, the typical case is that input data is conceptually in a regular 2d or 3d grid, and stored in binary format files (like NetCDF or HDF), as that is more efficient and saves space.

Then the heavy lifting number crunching code runs on a cluster as a batch job, reads in the data, crunches the numbers, and writes results out again in NetCDF or HDF files.

The output files are then downloaded to a desktop PC, and graphing is done with Matlab (Python is also getting more popular) or especially in meteorology with some dedicated meteorology graphing software.

The binary format input and output is probably about as efficient as it can be. Also, heavy number crunching scientist probably don't have much use for relational databases.

Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#38

Post by EliRivers »

dchest wrote: post #27
jgrahamc wrote: post #4

I'm guessing the title was chosen because the submitter thought coding in Fortran was stupid, or old, or whatever. The reality is that Fortran has been updated frequently and for what he's doing seems like a reasonable choice (plus he probably has a store of routines that he likes to use for certain analyses). Old language != Bad language From TFA: "SI: Is it true you still code in Fortran? JS: Yeah, what’s wrong wit…

the submitter thought coding in Fortran was stupid, or old, or whatever I don't think it's stupid or old, but it's certainly interesting : in the world where hopping from one newest technology to another is normal, somebody sticking to what they are used to is noteworthy. Some other examples are Bob Staake using Photoshop 3.0 ( http://www.bobstaake.com/pixfix/films.shtml ) or OpenBSD using CVS (hehe) and writing thei…

in the world where hopping from one newest technology to another is normal

On the assumption that you're talking about programmers, I suspect it isn't. I suspect the majority of the world's programmers stay with the same few tools for years and years, sometimes (but not always) upgrading a version when they're forced to.

Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#39

Post by dchest »

EliRivers wrote: post #38
dchest wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the submitter thought coding in Fortran was stupid, or old, or whatever I don't think it's stupid or old, but it's certainly interesting : in the world where hopping from one newest technology to another is normal, somebody sticking to what they are used to is noteworthy. Some other examples are Bob Staake using Photoshop 3.0 ( http://www.bobstaake.com/pixfix/films.shtml ) or OpenBSD using CVS (hehe) and writing thei…

in the world where hopping from one newest technology to another is normal On the assumption that you're talking about programmers, I suspect it isn't. I suspect the majority of the world's programmers stay with the same few tools for years and years, sometimes (but not always) upgrading a version when they're forced to.

Sure, I didn't mean the World, I meant our small world of tech news / startups.

Re: Verbatim: Stats guru Jeff Sagarin

#40

Post by kyllo »

rhizome wrote: post #24
kyllo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the guys trying to cram Javascript into every possible goddamned use case Fixed that for you. Yes Fortran is probably the right tool for the job in this case, but I also think that creative experimentation with programming languages, invention of new languages, new implementations of and enhancements to existing languages, are good and important, and not just a "hipster" thing. All modern programming langua…

It's a matter of taste. How many verbal languages can you speak and write? Computer languages aren't special, and polyglotism is really only a hallmark of CS-mindedness, which is actually yet another form of hipsterism. It's not a real thing, and the language that is best is the language that the programmer is most productive.

That really, really depends on what the language is being used for. There are a lot of desirable qualities and features, and no single language has even close to all of them. With the vast, vast number of different programming paradigms that are effective for solving different problems, as well the various resource constraints of different computing platforms, a certain degree of "polyglotism" is absolutely necessary to be an effective, productive programmer. There's nothing "hipster" about it.
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