Saul Luizaga <sau### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> J is particularly strong in the mathematical, statistical, and logical 
> analysis of arrays of data. It is a powerful tool in building new and 
> better solutions to old problems and even better at finding solutions 
> where the problem is not already well understood.

  The relevance of this in raytracing is to be questioned.

  A raytracer does not need to analyse arrays of data. A raytracer needs
to be fast.
  Will this language help POV-Ray be as fast as possible?

  Unless this language has a better native compiler than the ones
available for C/C++ or unless it will help POV-Ray resolve ray-shape
intersections, lighting calculations, etc a lot faster, it's of
little use.

  The crude truth is that speed is basically the *only* important
thing in a raytracer.
  If you can make the source code look a lot nicer using language xyz
but the resulting program is 5 times slower than one made in C, then
it only has a curiosity value, no real value.

  (Well-coded) C++ is a very good compromise between speed and
source-code quality. C++ is basically as fast as C, but you have
tons of OO properties to design your program better.
  Unless this J language can create binaries which are as fast
as C++, I don't see any real reason for using it in practice for
POV-Ray.

-- 
plane{-x+y,-1pigment{bozo color_map{[0rgb x][1rgb x+y]}turbulence 1}}
sphere{0,2pigment{rgbt 1}interior{media{emission 1density{spherical
density_map{[0rgb 0][.5rgb<1,.5>][1rgb 1]}turbulence.9}}}scale
<1,1,3>hollow}text{ttf"timrom""Warp".1,0translate<-1,-.1,2>}//  - Warp -

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