Bill Hart wrote:
> That was a nice article. Three things surprised me about what was
> otherwise a very uncontroversial article:
>
> 1) Networking and grid computing was not deemed applicable to
> mathematics (I don't disagree, I'm just interested that this was the
> observation of the author).
>
> 2) There was no attempt to highlight features of Sage which might get
> a user very excited about trying Sage - things Sage can easily do
> (functionally) which are very difficult to do in other systems.
>
> 3) There was no attempt to fill out the corollaries to the observation
> that the system is currently in a prototyping phase, i.e. few specific
> deficiencies or shortcomings in Sage were discussed. Though given what
> the author considers to be the evidence that Sage is in such a phase,
> perhaps this is not to be expected.
First, I also thought it was a very nice, safe article, and I really
appreciate the author writing it.
To fill out the discussion on (3), here is the relevant paragraph from
the front of the article:
"I regard Sage as a mathematical
software system in the prototype stage
of development—the point at which a
small community of users distributes,
maintains, and extends the system on
a voluntary basis. This is the predeces-
sor to the production developmental
stage, wherein one or more dedicated
organizations provide distribution,
maintenance, and extension services
to a larger user community that isn’t
directly involved in these activities."
I thought that was an interesting viewpoint, and deserves some thought
in applying it to us.
The screenshot (and his installation instructions) say he used Sage
version 3.0.1 (05 May 2008). That explains why he didn't mention a lot
of the very nice features we've seen added in the last year.
I wish he would have asked the community how to do his example problem
(maybe he did??). He showed how to solve a differential equation, and
he first defined it in maxima (using maxima("differential equation") )
and then used Sage from there on.
It would have also been nice if he would have highlighted the use of
maxima and other software underlying the sage functions. I think we
(i.e., Sage) got too much credit :).
Again, it was a nice article, and I surely do add my thanks to the author!
Jason
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