What are examples of Symbolic Programming?-Collection of common programming errors

This isn’t (just) a naked attempt to steal @Ken’s rep. I don’t recall what McCarthy’s original motivation for creating Lisp might have been. But it is certainly suitable for computer algebra, including differentiation and integration.

The reason that I am posting, though, is that automatic differentiation is used to mean something other than differentiating symbolic expressions. It’s used to mean writing a function which calculate the derivative of another function. For example, given a Fortran program which calculates f(x) an automatic differentiation tool would write a Fortran function which calculates f'(x). One technique, of course, is to try to transform the program into a symbolic expression, then use symbolic differentiation, then transform the resulting expression into a program again.

The first of these is a nice exercise in symbolic computation, though it is so well trodden that it might not be a good choice for a term paper. The second is an active research front and OP would have to be careful not to bite off more than (s)he can chew . However, even a limited implementation would be interesting and challenging.

Originally posted 2013-11-09 23:33:49.