On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 2:44 PM, rjf<fate...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > On Jul 25, 1:19 pm, Robert Bradshaw <rober...@math.washington.edu> > wrote: >>... snip... >> >> >(RJF) 2. The reason for the recommended choice of language is to avoid >> > languages with "long tool chains". >> >> (RB) 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. > > Those may be your reasons to use Python, but the paragraph from the > document I was referring to said, > in its entirety, > > "Do you develop in an uncommon programming language, requiring > learning > a new language and the installation of a large number of packages? > Products developed in languages other than C, C++, C#, Java, Python, > Perl and > Ruby generally require the developer to install an entire toolchain > which they would > not otherwise have on their computer. " > > It seems to me that he omits the primary decision point for me, which > is > that a good criterion for choosing a programming language is that it > should > be appropriate for the task at hand. For some people, computing speed > is > paramount; for others, compactness, speed of development, .... . > My belief is that Lisp is easy enough to learn, and someone who cannot > learn it quickly is unlikely to be highly productive in any > programming language. > > For people who want to create programs but do not wish to program -- > they can > patch together libraries in a graphical IDE. These are destined to > not be core > developers of a computer algebra system. >
I've posted a response to this email on the sage-flame mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/sage-flame/browse_thread/thread/17ad4cd93b7ec171# 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
