Lisparticles

2008.08.15 in code

Here's a post I promised a long time ago. I was playing around with Lisp back in late June, and wrote a little brute-force n-body problem solver. I should note that when I say brute force, I mean most naïve solution possible -- summing all of the forces, etc.

It seems this is one of the first things I write in a new language now... not sure why, it's not exactly a very good test of any language; at least not this type of implementation.

After the Lisp bit, I wrote a little point viewer in Perl (with Perl::OpenGL). It's not as pretty or fast as the one Radiohead used that was implemented in Processing, but this was before that was announced, and I've never (yet) written anything in Wiring/Processing, so I wouldn't have thought to use it.

So; it's all really very slow, and silly. Very. Very. Slow. But, it works. Also, it's physically inaccurate, in order to get results in any reasonable number of frames. Like, G is seven orders of magnitude larger than normal. So much for gravity being the weakest fundamental force... (EDIT: actually no. it's still not even close.)

So, for your particle-simulating-pleasure: the Lisp and the Perl.

Comments (legacy)