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0 pointsbachback12y ago0 comments

This is what I don't understand at all. Imagine somebody in a different area of computing would say: oh, we solved that 30 years ago and now there is no room for improvement at all? why can't this be done at least in C?

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cdavid12y ago

There is room for improvement, and it gets improved all the time (e.g. openblas is a recent contender). LAPACK is essentially an API for linear algebra, which is what allowed people to improve implementations and to benefit from them in older programs.

Think of it as the C library of numerical computing.

mistercow12y ago

I'm confused how a library written in Fortran 90 can be called "the C library of numerical computing".

cdavid12y ago

I was comparing LAPACK to the C library: nobody claims it is weird to use the C library, written > 30 years ago, instead of using something 'more modern'. Everybody uses the C library for system/low level programming, the same is true in numerical computing w.r.t. blas/lapack. Numpy/scipy use it, R use it, julia use it, matlab use it, octave use it.

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0 pointsbachback12y ago0 comments

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cdavid12y ago

Think of it as the C library of numerical computing.

mistercow12y ago

I'm confused how a library written in Fortran 90 can be called "the C library of numerical computing".

cdavid12y ago

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