I have very mixed feelings about this. I am a mathematician, definitely not a CS person, but I think people just need to get used to the behavior of range. It took me a while to adjust, but the benefits of learning python were well worth it. I think the preparser should be as minimal as possible.
The only reason I like the idea of ".." is that packages such as scipy and matplotlib are already very inspired by Matlab, so it would make sage more matlab-like, increasing the chance of winning over matlab users. But overall, I think it is best to stick to python syntax. Marshall On Sep 18, 6:32 am, Jaap Spies <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Martin Albrecht wrote: > > On Tuesday 18 September 2007, John Cremona wrote: > [...] > > >> Sorry if this sounds negative, but I have a feeling that sage-devel > >> has more CS people in it than mathematicians! > > > The main issue is: Starting at 1 cannot be done if you want to keep using > > Python, i.e. not reinventing the wheel. You can change the SAGE library code > > but everything core Python will still start counting at zero. Also, other > > libraries you might want to use with SAGE (one of the cool things about SAGE > > is that you can use it with all the other cool Python libraries) will still > > start counting at 0. Introducing a couple of functions which start counting > > at 1 will make things more difficult than easy. The rule: start counting at > > zero is easy enough to understand, though I appreciate that it is sometimes > > odd if you are working with a paper and have to fiddle with the indices. The > > rule: "sometimes we start at one and often at zero" is way harder to get > > IMHO. > > > So if we set aside our personal preferences and backgrounds (CS and Math) > > for > > a moment: by choosing a mainstream programming language the choice to start > > counting at zero was made as well. If we are not happy about it we might > > need > > to fork Python (this is not a proposal :-)). > > I think we should stay as close as possible to Python. > > And a lot of mathematicians start counting with 0 as the first natural number, > including me coming from 'The Foundation of Mathematics'. > > See for instance:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_number > > > Also, the argument given above is a marketing argument. It is about > > convincing > > somebody to use a piece of software. I don't think it is a good idea to > > change a clean, well understood and dominant design (at least in CS to be > > precise) just for the purpose of convincing somebody to use a product, when > > we don't even know, if [s]he's interested in it. If SAGE has the (best) > > tools > > researchers need, they will use it. If somebody refuses to use a piece of > > software because of indexing differences ... well ... I honestly wouldn't > > know what to say. > > +1 > > Jaap --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
