On 10/27/10 02:44 AM, William Stein wrote:
Hi,
When I started Sage I viewed it as a distribution of a bunch of math
software, and Python as just the interpreter language I happen to use
at the time. I didn't even know if using Python as the language would
last. However, it's also possible to think of Sage as a Python
library.
One comment I have. I feel the approach taken by projects like perl,
Mathematica, MATLAB, R etc is good. With these projects, there is a core system
containing functionality of useful to a large group.
When people want specific code to do work for their research interests, they
develop that themselves, and its made available for others to use if they want to.
For perl there is
http://www.cpan.org/
For Mathematica there is
http://library.wolfram.com/
For MATLAB there is File exchange
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/
For R there is
http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/
Well set up, there should be no conflicts in using more than one package. In the
case of Mathematica, all commands should be in lower case, as that can never
cause a problem with Mathematica, where all commands start in upper case.
It seems to me that there are too many people adding what is quite obscure maths
into Sage, which probably has no users other than themselves. I'm not a
mathematician, but I've heard this stored from Sage developers who are
mathematicians.
Of course Sage does have optional and experimental packages, but these are
actually quite small in number. For the Sage library, it seems that virtually
anything can get merged if it has some use to someone.
With all due respect to the authors, should a program to solve Rubiks cubes be
part of the core Sage, or as an optional component? I would postulate Wolfram
Reserach would never integrate such functionality into Mathematica, but would
probably post a package into their user-contributed library.
Dave
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