[sage-devel] Re: [sage-cloud-internal] William Stein says Sage has overall failed

2014-08-21 Thread William A Stein
On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 12:16 PM, Harald Schilly
harald.schi...@gmail.com wrote:
 Surprisingly, sometimes Reddit contains actual discussions:

 http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/2e3qla/william_stein_says_sage_has_overall_failed/

I just read through it.  It might be one reason that there were over
250 new SageMathCloud accounts in the last 24 hours, but that might
also be partly due to the new semester/quarter.

Thanks to all the knowledgable Sage contributors that answered
questions in that thread.

The title they gave it -- 'William Stein says Sage has overall
failed' -- seems a bit sensational.  I think that if people read
the blog post they will see that I don't mean that the enormous effort
that people like Volker, Jereon, etc., are doing, isn't a fantastic
job.  I'm measuring progress specifically in terms of the original
mission statement.

 -- William


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-- 
William Stein
Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org
wst...@uw.edu

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[sage-devel] Re: [sage-cloud-internal] William Stein says Sage has overall failed

2014-08-21 Thread kcrisman

The title they gave it -- 'William Stein says Sage has overall 

 failed' -- seems a bit sensational.  I think that if people read 
 the blog post they will see that I don't mean that the enormous effort 
 that people like Volker, Jereon, etc., are doing, isn't a fantastic 
 job.  I'm measuring progress specifically in terms of the original 
 mission statement. 


To be fair, you did kind of invite that interpretation with a somewhat 
dramatic line like that.  Sage clearly IS a viable alternative, and 
basically is a replacement at the undergraduate level.   It is not a 
replacement for everything - perhaps we need a jump like the combinat and 
matroid crowds did in arithmetic geometry?  But neither are they 
replacements for Sage at this point, right, in many areas?   Again, Sage is 
a viable alternative even for Matlab.  It's not as good for this as Octave, 
apparently, and no third-party support etc. - but some people do use it, or 
they wouldn't be asking for help.

So I think that it would have been better to say that the statement that 
has failed is a viable *replacement* for all four M's.  Well, that would be 
a hard goal indeed!  For precisely the reasons you give.  I don't think 
that makes Sage a failure, it just makes it different.  Presumably Maple 
and Mathematica are not replacements for each other either.

- kcrisman

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[sage-devel] Re: [sage-cloud-internal] William Stein says Sage has overall failed

2014-08-21 Thread Paul Graham
2014-2015 will be a big year for Sage i think, with SMC leading the charge, 
now that SMC in particular has matured alot. From personal everyday 
experience i know that the idea of being able to make a free account and 
have access to a more mathematically substantial/capable version of Wolfram 
Alpha ,where you can log in and save things, would be popular once school 
starts. Its annoying for students (including myself) trying to do something 
on wolfram alpha, but you cant because your only allowed to use the 
non-paid gimped version, unless you subscribe to become a pro member ($$$).

A lot more that could be said, but just some quick thoughts.

On Thursday, August 21, 2014 6:32:03 AM UTC-7, kcrisman wrote:


 The title they gave it -- 'William Stein says Sage has overall 

 failed' -- seems a bit sensational.  I think that if people read 
 the blog post they will see that I don't mean that the enormous effort 
 that people like Volker, Jereon, etc., are doing, isn't a fantastic 
 job.  I'm measuring progress specifically in terms of the original 
 mission statement. 


 To be fair, you did kind of invite that interpretation with a somewhat 
 dramatic line like that.  Sage clearly IS a viable alternative, and 
 basically is a replacement at the undergraduate level.   It is not a 
 replacement for everything - perhaps we need a jump like the combinat and 
 matroid crowds did in arithmetic geometry?  But neither are they 
 replacements for Sage at this point, right, in many areas?   Again, Sage is 
 a viable alternative even for Matlab.  It's not as good for this as Octave, 
 apparently, and no third-party support etc. - but some people do use it, or 
 they wouldn't be asking for help.

 So I think that it would have been better to say that the statement that 
 has failed is a viable *replacement* for all four M's.  Well, that would be 
 a hard goal indeed!  For precisely the reasons you give.  I don't think 
 that makes Sage a failure, it just makes it different.  Presumably Maple 
 and Mathematica are not replacements for each other either.

 - kcrisman


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[sage-devel] Re: [sage-cloud-internal] William Stein says Sage has overall failed

2014-08-21 Thread Anne Schilling
Hi William,

From my point of view Sage definitely has *not* failed! I would not be able 
to do the computations I need
for my research on any other platform at this point (of course this could 
be possibly done, but with an enormous
effort). More and more people are interested in switching to Sage at least 
people with a focus in
combinatorics, representation theory, root systems,  and are offering 
to organize Sage Days to learn
and start using and contributing to Sage. In fact, we just concluded Sage 
Days in India and there were
people interested in a variety of topics. From this point of view, Sage has 
gone far beyond any other
mathematical software system I know!

Best,

Anne

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