[Python-Dev] FYI: Techniques for scientific C++

[Tim Peters]

[David Ascher, concerning
    http://extreme.indiana.edu/~tveldhui/papers/techniques/]
]
> In case you haven't seen enough C++ papers, you might find this paper
> interesting. It's a good way to learn more about templates without trying
> to actually use them, and it's a very good way to decide to stay away from
> high-power C++ techniques like expression templates.  Yeeagh!

Didn't these people get to play with m4 in their youth?  Ah, this *is* their
youth <wink>.  As for so much else, this is stuff they could have been doing
with Lisp/Scheme compile-time macros 15 years ago, except the latter are
much clearer, simpler and easier to use.  It's not "a trick" in Scheme, it's
a fundamental approach, and the full power of the language is available at
every step.

If this kind of thing still holds a perverse attraction, check out

    http://www.fftw.org/

These guys produce what are usually the fastest FFT algorithms in the world
across platforms, via a dynamic programming approach that generates
algorithm fragments and times them on the target platform, eventually
"growing" superior platform-specific FFT code for each vector size.  Until
C++ templates can do file I/O at compile-time (to take advantage of timings
from previous runs), they won't even get close <wink>.

computation-at-compile-time-is-a-powerful-thing-but-
    then-so-is-a-skunk's-odor-ly y'rs  - tim