On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 02:23:35PM -0600, A.J. Gardner wrote: > Anyone know of any suckless math software out there in the tubes?
As for algebra, the king of the hill is without doubt LAPACK. But since Fortran is nowadays seldom used, few people can tell if it "sucks in the sense of suckless" (?). But it is still the fastest language in it's own area; this may or may not be important. As others have said, Maxima is a good choice for a CAS. Unfortunately the commercial alternatives are quite far ahead in many things, albeit these might "suck more". R is really good for statistics; a good amount of serious research is carried out with it. It is also my personal favourite. If you are into Python, Numpy and Scipy are relatively good. Sage is a kitchen sink and definitely "sucks". Finally, something that has not been mentioned yet. As much as I despise the use of GPL (with libraries...), I have to admit that GSL is quite "suckless" (i.e. clean, well-designed, and relatively simple) general purpose math library written in plain C. I could even say that it "sucks less", at least when compared to ever-so many C++ libraries in the field. - Juka.
