Iterative/non linear/chaotic Equations at audio-rate

if you don't have any experience in writing externals (c or java), and simply want to experiment with code a little to get going, i'd say you are better off trying java. with mxj/mxj~ it's really easy to do the first steps.
a lot of info and learning material already comes with the max5 installation.
make a bookmark of the api (Applications/Max 5/java-doc) in your favorite browser, take a look at the tutorial, check out the mxj~ examples and peek inside WritingMaxExternalsInJava.pdf.

and here is a stripped to the bones example of a simple mxj~ external.
(hopefully the formatting isn't mangled by the forum software...)

import com.cycling74.max.*;
import com.cycling74.msp.*;

public class logistic extends MSPPerformer
{
    private    double xm1 = 0.1;
    public    double r = 3.6;

    public logistic () {
        declareInlets(new int[]{DataTypes.FLOAT});
        declareOutlets(new int[]{SIGNAL});
        createInfoOutlet(false);
    }

    public void reset() {
        xm1 = 0.1;
        r = 3.6;
    }

    public void inlet(float f) {
        if(f>1 && f
    }

    public void perform(MSPSignal[] ins, MSPSignal[] outs) {
        //float[] in = ins[0].vec;    // we don't have signal inlets
        float[] out = outs[0].vec;
        int vs = outs[0].n;
        double x;

        for(int i=0; i
            x = r*xm1*(1-xm1);
            xm1 = x;

            out[i] = (float)x;
        }
    }
}