JAVA EXAMPLES

english ----- français

I stard to get interested to thi language in the idea of programming an algorithm to compute the A-polynomial of a knot to study character varieties on any field.

For now, you will find here three things:

THE TRACE CALCULATOR
A little algorithm to compute the trace of a word in terms of the traces of generators.

Availabe with plugin.

THE KNOTDRAWER
This little applet (and application) allows you to create draw knots and create SnapPea file format.

Both applications are presented as applets which means that, if your browser is well configured, you can run it from within your browser. Note that you should think about switching to a local application if you would like real speed.

Want some advice on how to run Java on your machine, see here in french.
Are you a Macintosh Java-fan, then, my MRJ page might interest you.

WHY JAVA ?

Although this programming language is not the best choice for speed (hey... assembler is better), it has been chosen it has been chosen in reaction of all those computation programs, including Maple and Mathematica who, after the computation launched will just tell you nothing except maybe offer you stop and to display the current memory and time taken... after which you still do not know if you're willing to go on or stop the seven hours your computer has been frozen.

Portability, ease of design for real user-interfaces are also major factors.

Three other major characteristics are important:

  • The possibility, naturally implented to make a multi-threaded application, in particular a thread that can watch the computation
  • The capacity to serialize which can mean freeze the computations as is are restart them later
  • Finally the possibiliy for a user not having a bare knowledge of what the language is to exchange some classes with some other some programmers have made... a plugin without interfacing for them.

Return to Paul's Home page Last modification on March 20th, 2001. paul@mathweb.org