Programming for a mathematician?

I have started studying Haskell. I expect the type system and monads to be the most interesting things to learn (I know common lisp and have already seen many cool features). Though the days of general programming are long gone. I am interested in writing math apps though. Should I continue learning Haskell or should I start studying Mathematica (or some other alternative like matlab/maple) instead?

I am interested in writing math PROGRAMS though.*

Oh silly me, where did I get the idea of ``apps'' from and where did I get the idea of calling programs them?
_{yeah fucker, where did you get the idea?}

you should fuck off. this board is not for the discussion of programming.

>>3
eat my little dick

philosophy > theology > pure mathematics > computer science > physics

What do you mean by `math program' ?  Do you mean trivialities like automated applications of Cramer's rule - larger versions of the QUADRATC program everyone wrote on their TI-8X back in the day? Programs which do not use an abnormal amount of higher math but have math-related content, like a `Lemma of the day' reminder?  Distributed prime-checkers on the GPU?

It really depends. If you want to encode theorems into programs, you want Coq, although you could continue with Haskell. If you want to do stuff like FFT at usable speeds, you want OCaml (in which FFTW is implemented), C, or even trusty Fortran.  If you want to do anything involving large scale brute force, you'll want to experiment with CUDA and OpenCL.

>>6
wow nerd if u spent all that time trying to get a girlrffreind then u wouldnt still be a virgin right noaw lol

>>7
Hey, there's girl at the bar. Let's all go there right now! _{bring your portable computer device with you so you still post on /prog/ while you are there}

>>8
that's exactly what I do

Like >>6-kun said, you really need to be more specific when you say math apps. Each of the big math languages are designed for specific problem domains (though they do include other general functions as well).

Mathematica, Maple - symbolic math with numerical solvers
MATLAB - matrix calculations
SAS - statistics

>>2
Terminology has little to do with the question.
>>6
I am not sure what I mean by math program. But I sure do like the 3D visualizations they make. A math program for example:
Let S be any 2 dimensional surface with some gravitational field F defined on it, and m₁, m₂, ... m_k be the mass of spheres of some radius. I'd like to work out how they'd 'roll' on that surface and hit each other. Ideally the input would be the surface, gravity field and spheres, and then there would be an animation of how things would roll out. I think it'd be best to write this in Mathematica/matlab/maple.

Coq is not what I have in mind, I'm talking about fancy 3D stuff that is not mathematically trivial (For example, this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gRx66xKXek )

>>10
What about R?

>>12
Never used it myself, but that's mainly a stats language.

>>11
Yes, you do know what you want.  It's just that what you said in the OP was more general than you meant.  90% of what you want can be achieved by simply doing the work yourself and then plotting the resulting figures in something as simple as Sketchup, which isn't a programming language as much as a design tool.  See http://sketchesoftopology.wordpress.com/ .  The remaining 10% - the physics bits and the rendering of animations of n-body problems and such, is something you want to learn 3D graphics for.  I would recommend C and OpenGL and struggling through all the camera manipulation until you understand the matrix multiplication side of things, but that's just what I've done, and I'm a C guy.  If an existing tool doesn't give you what you want, maybe you're just better off writing your own.

>>6
Distributed dubs-checkers

thread reported to the gods.

>>14
thanks sketchup is clean and lean!