Hi!
On Nov 2, 6:18 pm, "William Stein" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> People coming from a Mathematica background should not assume that
> >> they know all there is to know about how to use a Computer Algebra
> >> System, and instead, read the documentation.
>
> > This is so obnoxiously wrong, I just don't know where to start.
>
> What is wrong? That statement Justin made or that he made it at all?
I think Justin's statement is true in the sense that people with a
Mathematica, Maple, Magma or Sage background should not believe that
the respective system is the philosopher's stone. It should be self-
evident that changing from one system to another sometimes involves to
look into a manual.
On the other hand, the statement is partially wrong in the following
sense: We should not *suppose* that a person changing from Mathematica
to Sage will first thoroughly read the manual. I agree with Robert,
who wrote that one should try to accomodate the people.
I think Harald is right that a descriptive error message can be very
helpful to a novice. The problem is that a very descriptive message
would depend on the context, and making it context-sensitive would
involve work. But it is (to some extent) doable!
Example:
-------------
1.
sage: y
...
NameError: name 'y' is not defined
That's clear enough.
2.
sage: sin(y)
...
NameError: name 'y' is not defined
That's the same message - but the context (calculus-function) makes it
clear that the user wanted to make y a variable. Suggestion:
3.
Context sensitivity could be obtained by catching and re-raising
errors.
Would it be possible that the calculus-functions catch any NameError
and re-raise it with an extended error message? The following error
message may be a better help to the people:
sage: sin(y)
...
NameError: name 'y' is not defined. If 'y' is intended to be a
variable, please use var('y'). Type var? for help
Cheers
Simon
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