On Jul 25, 2009, at 7:32 AM, rjf wrote: > I glanced at the document and at William's response. Here are a few > observations. > > 1. No native Windows version seems to me to be a big issue, but it has > never been > clear to me how hard it is for an ordinary user (not admin) to install > emulation software, > on a perhaps shared machine to run (or compile??) anything, much less > Sage.
I've learned to never underestimate the ignorance of computer users. It's not that they're all unintelligent, but the number of people that just want to use a computer vastly outnumbers the number of people that want to learn anything about computers. Often they just want to spend their time learning about different things (just as I want to drive a car, but personally have no interest in repairing one). "Download this file and double-click on it" or "go to this site and create a username/password" is fine for most people, but as we learned with 7zip, anything more, even with a clear README.txt, is a surprisingly high barrier. Of course, even now, there are lots of windows users (at least it seems to be the largest download). > 2. The reason for the recommended choice of language is to avoid > languages with "long tool chains". I don't think this was the primary motive--qualities like easy to learn, easy to read, widely used, lots of libraries, easy integration with the massive number of open C and C++ math libraries already out there, fast enough (and easy to make fast, e.g. via Cython/Pyrex) were more important concerns. > I suppose that if you insisted on compiling a Lisp each time you > downloaded it, > instead of just downloading the executable version, some of them might > have long tool chains. > But the typical Lisp executable -- does it have ANY tool chain? Does > gcc have a long tool chain? If you > do not require bootstrapping (compiling) gcc on a bare machine > (lacking any gcc), why should you require bootstrapping a lisp without > a lisp executable? > > 3. As I've indicated previously, the mission statement is, in my view, > not clear. The phrase "viable free open source alternative" is too > vague. What is a viable alternative ? There's a lot of room for interpretation, but in my mind, it means you don't ever find yourself in a situation where you need the above because what Sage provides just isn't good enough. > How does this goal differ from Maxima, Axiom, Reduce, Jacal, ... or > for that matter, Octave? Probably in comprehensiveness. Maxima and Reduce, as far as I know, never plan on doing number theory computations. Octave only wants to be an alternative to Matlab, but doesn't care about what Magma can do. I've never heard of Jacal, but it mostly seems to be focused on the computer algebra side of things. > Is Maxima a viable free open source alternative? It certainly doesn't do everything the M*s do. (It doesn't want to.) To my understanding, it's the most complete contender for the computer algebra stuff though. > Would it be one if it were written in Python? No, but it would be easier to use from Sage :). > > I think that your goal is really to build the most inclusive darn > "computer algebra system" you can, within your own self-imposed > restrictions regarding languages, licensing, distribution, > bootstrapping, shared responsibility, and especially the use of > externally-provided free modules. Sounds good to me. - Robert --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
