On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 3:38 PM, root <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Sage is dancing around like it has discovered something new and > wonderful.
Yes, I'm certainly pretty excited about the Sage project, especially the many really interesting people involved in it! > But I've been in this business now since the late 80s and > Sage has done absolutely NOTHING that has not already been done > before. There are numerous specific technical algorithms now implemented in Sage that are not implemented in any other system. But that is *not* the main point of Sage. > Maple used a highly popular language (C) as its basis for a > user interface, Maple's language is a special purpose language designed for that system, which is based on another language. Sage really does use a mainstream language. There is a difference. > MMA used Lisp-like notation initially. Mathematica uses a special purpose language designed for mathematics. Even if it is inspired by Lisp it is not lisp. Sage really does use a mainstream programming language. > Magnus collected experts and was funded by NSF. > Axiom was funded by NSF and IBM I'm really glad that getting funded is not something new for mathematical software! >. Axiom used to be "free and open source" when I was at IBM. If you > asked I'd send you a tape of the source code. "Ask and I'll send you a tape" is hugely different than freely available on the internet and licensed under the GPL. Stallman's GPL itself *is* a powerful and new idea compared that was created in response to... we'll we all know the story. > Magnus has always been > free as Gilbert thought it was important. William Stein is a new > incarnation of Gilbert Baumslag, 20 years later, thinking he's > discovered something that nobody ever noticed before. I honestly don't care whether Sage contains amazing new "stuff" or not; I do not care about discovering something new in mathematical software or not; computer algebra is *not* my research area -- my research is in number theory, and that's where I care about discovering new things. I am driven by one single goal related to Sage: Create a free viable open source alternative to Maple, Mathematica, Magma, and Matlab, which means a community, distribution system, funding model, books, papers, etc. If something new and interesting comes out of this, so be it. > Sage has some deep problems which have yet to surface. > - It suffers from the namespace problem that Maple struggles with. Sage's namespace semantics *are* Python's, and Python has by far the best namespace semantics I've ever seen in any programming language. Hands down. > - It suffers from the performance issues of multiple systems being > called by intermediate parsers from an interpreted core. Sage has the unique *capability* of doing calculations that involve multiple systems being called from an interpreted core. > - It suffers from the "I can do it better", do-it-yet-again-in-python > syndrome, where it will be discovered that python is too slow > so we need to rewrite it in Cython and do obscure, undocumented, > performance enhancing software hacks. Real life software that has as one of its goals to be fast often involves performance enhancing hacks. > - It suffers from the "OpenMath" communication issue (e.g. if you > take an Axiom expression, export it to maple, compute with it, > and re-import it to Axiom you have violated a lot of type > assumptions in Axiom, possibly violated branch cut assumptions > (e.g. acosh), done invalid simplifications, and any number of > violent mathematical mistakes) Sage does not in any way use OpenMath. > - It collects system that will eventually lose their maintainers > due to the many reasons that open source software stops being > maintained. Will Sage simply drop the software you depend upon? We only include immortal programs in Sage. > - It drops "legacy" systems. But mathematicians rarely, if ever, > upgrade to the latest tools and opsys releases. It is fine to > say "update your compiler" (twice replied to my bugs) to a > hacker like me but most people won't do it. The only reason it > is working now is that all of the code is "new". Wait 5 years > and you'll find out that most people drop the system because > it requires them to upgrade their whole working environment. > - the list goes on.... Are you saying that Sage is doomed because most people won't upgrade anything on their computers for the next five years? > What I'm suggesting is that if they want Sage to be different from > the many other systems lying dead on the road (e.g. Magnus) then they > need to capture the expertise needed to write, maintain, modify, and > extend the algorithms AS THEY ARE WRITTEN. So Magnus is roadkill on the information superhighway? > But the argument is "that takes time". But it takes MUCH more time to > reverse engineer a mathematical algorithm (if it can be done at all). > Believe me, I dragged in the fields-medal experts to try to document > Magnus and failed. > > If Sage can contribute anything it can contribute new algorithms. The main goal of Sage is to be a viable alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica, and Matlab, and to do so ASAP. It is *not* to contribute new algorithms. That's not the main goal. > (Because python is going to be a "cobol" language eventually). Cobol is right now in the top twenty of computer languages according to http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html > But if those algorithms are not properly documented they will die > when Sage dies (just like the group theory algorithms in Magnus > are dying as Magnus dies). > > It frustrates me to watch so many mathematicians fling their > notebooks into the public domain thinking they don't REALLY have > to TAKE THE TIME to do it right. Dude, you need to chill out. -- William --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
