Another misunderstanding is as for the programming language, Fortran. This is one of the very old languages developed for numerical calculation of physics and mathematics, but still exists.

Fortran is a language specialized only for calculation, so it has been updated with such objective. In other words, Fortran becomes the most accurate and the quickest to calculate physics problems.

However, C language (later extended to C++) emerged in the market and it has been more versatile, especially for software engineers. Then, the language spread out for almost all the programmers.

After that, speaking of Fortran, people say, "You are still using such an old fossil-like language?", or "You can’t get any job if you use such a language."

Indeed, most of those people have never used Fortran, and they do not even have programming experiences. (By the way, I have used two languages, C / C++ and Fortran, in the calculation of physics and mathematics for a long period.)

Currently, Fortran is still being developed. Related engineers are upgrading it so that we can even use pointers and object oriented programming, which could only be used in C /C++ a long time ago. On the other hand, for C/C++, people created a lot of libraries and modules for numerical calculation. Now, the difference between Fortran and C has decreased.

However, there are still some weak points for each of them. Fortran cannot be used as a general purpose. In other words, Fortran is still not optimized as a role of programming the software. (Maybe, it doesn’t have to be…)

Then, C / C++ has a weakness in giving accurate numerical values. The default accuracy of Fortran is much better than C /C++.

A couple of years ago (about year of 2014), I had to give numerical values using the formula of quartic equation, which is called Ferrari's formula. I initially used C, but the result was far from the exact solution. Then, I programmed the same algorithm with Fortran, and as a result, I was able to get the accurate values that were very close to the exact solutions.

I believe that the computer and its languages will be developed further in the future. Thus, rather than learning only a popular language, people should master multiple languages and spend a time to accomplish something with those programming languages. That will be more important as a programmer or a simulator.

As a physicist, I have had many opportunities to use computers. My job has involved managing hardware and software for physics experiments, programming for numerical calculation, and repairing of system problems. 

However, I am not a computer expert. I don’t have a degree of computer science. I don’t have experience in developing computer software either. So you can see I am a person between computer amateurs and the experts. In this article, I would like to point out fallacies related computer topics as a physicist.

First of all, for people who do not know computers much, the concept of bits is not well understood. A common mistake is that "64 bits is twice the 32 bits."

A bit is a unit for counting the number of digits in the binary number system. Therefore, one bit is one digit, which represents two ways such as 0 and 1. If you have 2 bits, it will be four ways with two digits and each with two ways.

By considering this rule, we conclude 32 bits as 2 to the power of 32 ways. So 64 bits are as 2 to the power of 64. Therefore, 64 bits will be 4294967296 times larger than 32 bits. (You can simply calculate 2⁶⁴ divided by 2³².)

Certainly, the number of digits is twice, but from the number of cases it can handle, this value is more meaningful to consider the power of computation.

This is the same as physics. The units represent what the numbers are, and give you the meaning.

Picture by by John Kovacich

In the United States, while a professor grades his/her students, the students evaluates their professor. It also helps the professor improve the class management for the future classes.
 
I read the evaluation written by the student after the semester. In fact, studetns wrote very well to describe the professor’s teaching method and overall educational effects by taking the class.
 
Apart from such evaluation, I personally interviewed many of students, and they told me quite interesting facts that they really think.
 
Students generally want teachers who can break down the contents and make himself/herself understood for every student. However, students do not respect a teacher who makes class too easy. It depends on students, but I sense that most of the students want a good education rather than easy grades
 
After I had interviews with many of the students, I noticed that the evaluation on the teaching method from the professors’ point of view is different from the that from the students’ point of view.
 
As I mentioned earlier, students want teachers who can make difficult concepts easy and teach patiently when students have hard time to understand them.
 
On the other hand, for the professor so-called hiring side, there is a tendency to choose a professor who can fluently and dignifiedly speak in front of people with some witty expressions.
 
In other words, the professors already know what s/he talks, so they would like to choose people who can talk smoothly and bring out some difficult concepts of subjects.
 
Anyway, when such a professor is selected to hire, it tends to be tough for students. Namely, such professor may express the attitude like "Why don’t you understand such easy stuff?" Then, the evaluation from the students becomes often low in many cases.
 
I just remember that one student said to me, "When someone becames a teacher, s/he will forget what s/he was a student a long time ago." What a good expression it is!
 
It is reasonable to say that there is such a conceptual gap between students and professors. If we do not cnsider this, it will be hard to bring about student-centered quality of education.