> I'm surprised by how convinced you are that using a specific > technology/language -- literate programming -- can be a silver > bullet to solve such a difficult problem. I think peer review, > and many many other things, are steps in the right direction, > but *not* solutions to the problem. I think it's just a difficult > problem, with no easy solutions.
Actually, I don't think that literate programming is a silver bullet. But I do think that it exposes the real work that is needed to make something like Sage live (see my power-of-3 screed a while back). If Gary is going to figure out "the way up the mountain face" wouldn't it make sense to write it down so others can read it? Or is it better to let the next person figure it out (badly) from reading the code and inferring the path? Mathematical equations are "icons". You read a paper or book which explains all the meaning of the terms and then summarize it all in an iconic equation "E=MC^2". A book on mathematics would be rather worthless if you just collected up all the equations, sorted them by some random metric into collections of files, and then passed them on to the next person. That is, however, what we do with the code now. Tim --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
