On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 11:34 PM, William Stein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 1:19 PM, Bill Hart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> William Stein wrote: >> >> > > I 100% totally and absolutely agree with Tim Daly that computer >> > > algebra is at the handwaving stage. >> > > As a mathematician concerned with >> > > rigour, I am interested to know what SAGE hopes to do about it. >> > >> > Nothing. This is certainly not one of my goals of Sage; it's not >> > needed to create a viable alternative to the MA*'s, since they are also >> > at the handwaving stage. >> >> I believe we can do a *lot* better than that. > > So do I. However, that is definitely not my goal. > >> As I want to actually *use* SAGE for research, I need to know I can >> trust the output to a relatively high degree, just as I trust results >> from other people's papers. So, the upshot is that you can expect the >> parts of SAGE that I end up using to be pretty well tested - by me. >> The reason is simply that it is a lot less work to test SAGE properly >> and visually check the code than it is to develop it all over again >> myself. But be prepared for the onslaught! > > Excellent! The more bugs we know about the better. Thanks. > I know the Magma group greatly appreciates your bug reports, > and so will I. > >> I also think that people from other projects who start to worry about >> the threat SAGE poses and read that comment are not going to sit back >> and let SAGE become a viable alternative. >> Especially the Magma group >> are going to think, OK, to make SAGE irrelevant, we need to do much >> better testing, formalise things better and write better documentation >> (oh and they should open source it as well, though there are other >> options they don't seem to have thought of). > > Maybe all mathematical software will improve even more in overall > quality as a result. That would make the world a better place. > >> Magma is not a stationary >> target. To be a viable alternative, you need to aim ahead of them. > > This makes the game sound one dimensional, but it isn't. Things are > more complicated than your analogy about moving targets might > suggest. Features, speed, usability, books, > user communities, cost, the user programming language, support, etc., are > all important factors that people consider when deciding which products > to use in a free marketplace. When I say making Sage a viable > alternative this is what I'm talking about it. > > My impression talking to a lot of users over the last few years > is that most people who currently use Sage do so for the simple > reason that it has enough functionality and they like Python a lot more > than the custom programming languages in the other math software > systems. For these people "Python" of course means the whole > ecosystem of Python, which includes the millions of users, the > thousands of third party packages, the books, classes, and other > resources, etc. They might not like the Python language that much, > but it's at least usable, has a good ecosystem around it, extremely > good financial support, and a clear path forward. > >> Anyway, it proves Tim Daly's thesis that SAGE has done nothing new if >> we only aim to emulate roughly what has already been done by the >> Ma*'s. I'm not entirely sure I completely agree with that thesis, I do >> see new things in SAGE, but it does start to sound like he has a >> point. > > I don't care whether Sage does anything new or not in the above "computer > algebra researcher" sense. > > My humble goal is simply to give people (starting with me) a viable > open source free mathematical software choice like how the > generous folks who work on Firefox (and Inkscape, OpenOffice, Linux, etc.), > give people a choice so they don't have to use Internet Explorer > (and Illustrator, Word, Windows Vista, etc.). > >> I also recall Roman Pearce recently getting upset about developers not >> wishing to do the hard work to tackle some of the big algorithms and >> just imagining that wrapping the right functionality in another >> package will deal with those. Off list he made the point to me that he >> doesn't even consider Magma worth competing with. He is thinking so >> far ahead of Magma that it is not even relevant to him. Getting within >> a factor of two of what Magma already does is not a worthy aim. As a >> general principle, that is a good way to think. We need to aim past >> Magma to become a viable alternative to them, and the big problems >> with Magma are bugs, documentation and closed codebase. They have >> speed for the most part and they have coverage. The main advantage we >> have at present is an open code base. > > The above thinking is typical from people doing research in the computer > algebra community. And there is nothing wrong with it at all. > It just has nothing to do with what the Sage project is about. > Sage is a just a good old-fashioned open source software engineering project > aimed at normal everyday people who like using computation to enrich their > enjoyment of mathematics. That's it. Sage is supposed to solve an > immediate need today of everyday working mathematicians like me and my > students. > > "Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a > small _trivial_ project, and you should never expect it to get large. > If you do, you'll just overdesign and generally think it is more > important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be > scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision. So start > small, and think about the details. Don't think about some big picture > and fancy design. If it doesn't solve some fairly immediate need, it's > almost certainly over-designed. And don't expect people to jump in and > help you. That's not how these things work. You need to get something > half-way _useful_ first, and then others will say "hey, that _almost_ > works for me", and they'll get involved in the project." > > -- Linus Torvalds. > > "Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a > good excuse for some of the brain-damages of Minix." > > -- Linus Torvalds
Or "Talk is cheap. Show me the code.". Linus' quotes are so simple and also so deep, that I don't have to add anything besides +1. Ondrej --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
