Tonto | ||
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The name TONTO [1] means "idiot" in Spanish. That name was chosen because the main aim of TONTO is to be simple [2].
More specifically, the main aims of TONTO are, in order of priority:
To provide useful tools for computational chemistry
To be simple to use, understand, maintain, and modify
To be efficient
Note that, for TONTO, simplicity is regarded as more important than efficiency. A few words should be said about this rather strange decision.
It cannot be denied that computational chemistry calculations are usually very time consuming. In order to reduce calculation time it is desirable to use complex but efficient algorithms. Thus, the objective of simplicity may be in conflict with the objective of efficiency. Getting the balance between these two issues is always tricky.
This is how we resolve the conflict in TONTO :
If it is not possible to provide a single piece of code which is both simple and highly efficiency, we try to provide two equivalent routines: one simple, the other efficient. We regard simplicity as being more important that efficiency because, although it may be possible to achieve speedup in a certain calculation of a factor of 5-10 or so by optimisation of the implementation of an algorithm by complex code manipulations to take advantage of compiler or hardware features, to go beyond this requires a fundamental change in the algorithm itself. When such a fundamental change is required, it is better to have a simple code so that the parts that do not need to change can be easily identified.
[1] | The name was suggested by Anthony Russell |
[2] | For non-english speakers: Tonto was also the name of the Lone Ranger's trusty Indian companion in a famous wild-west TV series |