Apropos of nothing, some of my first programming lessons were FORTRAN programs from my dads old engineering textbooks. The book’s graphics showed them being handwritten on graph paper and even showed the punch cards they would ultimately be put on.
One of the most impressive programs solved Laplaces equation for heat flow in a pipe. They used some mysterious plotting library that put ASCII art to draw contour lines and output directly to a line printer. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, but it was hard for a high school kid to understand.
Over the years I’ve thought of writing that program in a modern language, but it was never worth the time and effort to go over that FORTRAN program in detail. Numerical methods are too often explained from the point of view of mathematicians and engineers, and not computer programmers.
The blog post here is 1000x more readable and much higher quality and does a lot to demystify the subject. I especially like his progression from simple brute force methods to more efficient solutions…which is the natural way to learn. His comment about “Laplace’s equation just means every point is the average of its neighbours” is perfect.
Believe or it not I was in need of just such a tutorial … for something I’ve been thinking about at work. His article really hit the spot and I’m grateful for it.
One of the most impressive programs solved Laplaces equation for heat flow in a pipe. They used some mysterious plotting library that put ASCII art to draw contour lines and output directly to a line printer. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, but it was hard for a high school kid to understand.
Over the years I’ve thought of writing that program in a modern language, but it was never worth the time and effort to go over that FORTRAN program in detail. Numerical methods are too often explained from the point of view of mathematicians and engineers, and not computer programmers.
The blog post here is 1000x more readable and much higher quality and does a lot to demystify the subject. I especially like his progression from simple brute force methods to more efficient solutions…which is the natural way to learn. His comment about “Laplace’s equation just means every point is the average of its neighbours” is perfect.
Believe or it not I was in need of just such a tutorial … for something I’ve been thinking about at work. His article really hit the spot and I’m grateful for it.