As we just described, every tool has its own strengths and weaknesses. Let's
take a minute to examine our computing tools: Maple and C.
C is a programming language. When you use C to solve a problem, the
first step is to write out a complete list of instructions, or commands for the
computer, called a program. This program is generally stored in a file.
How is this different than the way you've usually used Maple?
Click here for an answer.
Here are some other features and misfeatures of our tools:
- Maple is specialized for doing mathematics and symbolic
computation. C is generally designed for numeric computation. It can
take a lot of time and effort to write a C program to do symbolic computation.
- Well-written programs in C can often solve problems more
quickly than Maple can. This is because you can ``tune'' the C program for the
problem, much as you can tune an engine for top performance.
- It is easy to produce charts and graphs with Maple. It can take a
lot of work to produce graphs with C programs.
- C is available in more places than Maple is available.
If you write a program in C, it's usually not too difficult to move your
program to another computer system. Maple programs can't be moved around to so
many places.
- C is considered to be a good language for general-purpose programming.
C is becoming more and more popular, meaning that lots and lots of programs are
written in C. (C++, a ``cousin'' programming language to C, is also becoming
very popular.) There are large libraries of already-written C code that you
can use in your own programs.
When you need to choose the best computing tool for the job at hand, you must
consider all of these features. None of our tools is the right tool for every
engineering problem that you'll need to solve.
Eric N. Eide
Hamlet Project
Department of Computer Science
University of Utah