We could always continue this discussion on sage-flame. I think that persons who wish to use this functionality in Maxima could consider that maybe they should just use Maxima.
Exposing this functionality better from the Sage top level may be possible, but not something that I am interested in doing. I think the examples are pretty evident. You can take any Maxima program f and compile it by issuing the command compile(f). If you wish to impose assumptions on the types of variables, you can read about mode_declare. This is optional. Perhaps I should point out that I am not opposed to linking together software written originally for different purposes, maybe in different languages. Maxima uses quadpack, linpack, gplot, ... Some of the earliest projects for VAX Macsyma (circa 1979) at Berkeley were to use Macsyma as a front end to MINPACK, and also allow it to exchange data and send commands to MATLAB. (In 1979 Matlab was (a) free. (b) written in Fortran). I have personally written, or supervised students writing, code linking Lisp/Maxima with Excel, .NET, GMP, MPFR, net servers etc. Even within Macsyma/Maxima there is a proliferation of special packages for achieving higher levels of efficiency for subclasses (e.g. polynomials over the integers, Taylor series, Poisson series). I am also not opposed to free software. (Though I do not whole- heartedly endorse GPL as a way to achieve that). I am also not opposed to people learning Python. To the extent that Sage does "symbolic mathematical computation" in the tradition of (say) the ACM SIGSAM special interest group, it should be possible to be more accurate and complete in portraying what it does and how it does it. Maybe I'm old-fashioned. I find statements like "Mathematica is the world's ultimate application for computations..." http://www.wolfram.com/products/ to be excusable only because it is written by a marketeer. Claims for Sage are more modest, but not so much. I am leery of using the word "ideal" [except in abstract algebra] to describe a program I wrote, but as I said, maybe I'm old-fashioned. "Many aspects of Sage make it an ideal tool for teaching mathematics," "For many mathematicians and students, Sage is today the mature, open source, and free foundation on which they can build their research program." both quotes from focm11.pdf RJF RJF On Nov 25, 8:27 am, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > Sage-devel was so nice for the last few months with out Richard Fateman > FUD... > On Nov 25, 2011 8:13 AM, "rjf" <fate...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > re: writing stubs to access C (etc) libraries from Lisp. > > > There are several lisp programs which will take your *.h files and > > attempt to > > automatically write all the stubs. This cannot be entirely automated > > but > > my limited experience with this suggests it can be quite successful. > > I've linked to libraries (GMP, I think) that were in some python > > format, years ago. > > > My own timings are on a different lisp, different compiler > > optimizations, > > different computer. The range of speed-ups in compiling Maxima could > > conceivably from 0 (i.e. not faster at all... maybe even slower...) to > > huge - 1000X . > > > Based on absolutely no statistical evidence, my guess is that the vast > > majority of > > users of Sage use it as a front end to Maxima, or things which could > > easily be done > > in Maxima but might also be done in the Pythonish Sage front end > > language/ system itself. > > > I further guess there is not really a competition between Sage and the > > commercial Ma*. > > Rather, competition for mind-space between (A) users who simply > > download Maxima from > > sourceforge and use it, possibly contributing to it, > > and (B) users who download Sage, are told how great python is, and > > then end up using Sage as a front-end to Maxima, but through an > > apparently poor pexpect > > interface. I think it is less likely that such B) users will > > understand or make use > > of the tools that might be available in Maxima, and much less likely > > that these users will > > contribute to the tools in Maxima, which can most easily be > > accomplished by writing in the Maxima language > > or in Common Lisp. Not Python. > > > It would be simple for William to say, occasionally, that Maxima is > > written in Common Lisp and it is possible to incrementally improve the > > Maxima component efficiently by writing in Lisp. People do it all the > > time. > > > Instead we see the occasional proposal which looks like "Let's > > encourage some high school student to rewrite the X facility of Maxima > > in Python this summer. It's bound to be much faster and better, > > especially since we can compile parts of it via Cython. And since > > Python is so easy to learn." > > > The idea that what is difficult about (say) the symbolic definite > > integration program in Maxima is that it was written in Lisp rather > > than Python is, to me, a symptom of very shallow analysis of the > > situation. > > > But we have wandered off the track of the subject line. > > > RJF > > > -- > > To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com > > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > > For more options, visit this group at > >http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > > URL:http://www.sagemath.org -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
