On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 11:06 AM, mark mcclure <mcmcc...@unca.edu> wrote: > > On Apr 29, 1:37 pm, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 9:51 AM, mark mcclure <mcmcc...@unca.edu> wrote: >> >> > I think, though, that the statement that you need open source in order >> > to have verifiable results is not really true. The fact is that bugs are >> > found via experimentation, not by reading source code. >> >> This is not a fact! I have a lot of experience finding and seeing >> bugs found, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms that a huge >> number of the bugs found in Sage are in fact found by reading source >> code. > > I too have founds bugs by reading code that I've written - usually, > very > early on in the development process. Note that I'm talking in the > context > of result verification, however. That is, when I publish a paper > that > depends on computations, it is incumbent upon me to verify those > computations. I'm saying that I don't think that reading source code > at that point is particularly necessary or useful.
Thanks for the clarification. That also doesn't agree with my experience, but perhaps things are different in your area of research which is probably far from mine (elliptic curves and modular forms). William --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
