I’ve written many times about Atebey Kaygun’s blog and his wonderful exploration of mathematics through Lisp. Robert Smith over at symbo1ics has a nice video on using Common Lisp for mathematics. It’s a long video that explores how Lisp is a superior platform for doing mathematics.
I’ve found this to be true in my own work. I like to experiment with cryptographic algorithms and almost always this involves bignum arithmetic. In Lisp you don’t have to think about this—it just happens automatically. If you’re writing in C it’s a nightmare. As Smith says, the code looks like assembly language where every arithmetic operation appears on a separate line.
It’s not just the numerical tower, though. Watch the video to see some of the other benefits that Lisp has to offer in Mathematical programming. Smith also covers some of the short comings of Lisp in this area.
The video is over an hour and 45 minutes so you’ll need to schedule some time to watch it. I enjoyed the video and if you like Mathematics and Lisp, you probably will too.