On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 3:22 PM, William Stein<wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:15 AM, Dag Sverre > Seljebotn<da...@student.matnat.uio.no> wrote: >> >> William Stein wrote: >>> Perhaps I'm missing the point, but I'm taking this as a message to >>> focus in Sage more on the algebraic/symbolic side of mathematics >>> (e.g., Magma, Maple, Mathematica) rather than the numerical side, at >>> least for the time being. I don't have a problem with that >>> personally, since that is what I do best, and where most of my >>> personal interests are. >>> >>> My impression is that Enthought is the overall the leader in the >>> effort to create and distribute scientific computing tools using >>> Python. The founders of the company have a clear passion and love >>> for this, and seem from the outside at least to have simultaneously >>> done well for their clients and developer and user base, while walking >>> the tightrope of commercial versus open source. Part of that >>> balance has been for the most part drawing a line and *not* having GPL >>> or LGPL code in the core of their codebase. I do not in any think >>> that is "morally wrong" (I obviously prefer it to the situation with >>> my Microsoft neighbors). However, since Sage is a GPL'd project, this >>> has the natural corollary that almost no two-way technical interaction >>> is possible between the two projects. As result, the Sage project and >>> the Enthought/Python stack tend to compete for users rather than share >>> them, since they really are two different platforms (at least at some >>> layers, especially the GUI/graphics layers and distribution system). >>> >>> I think it's roughly reasonable to call the top 7 most popular topics >>> in your tutorial list basically "the Enthought scientific computing >>> stack". The bottom four are (L)GPL'd, one is Sage and another in >>> Sage. >>> >>> The best conclusion I can draw from all this is that for now at least >>> I'm going to focus on symbolic/algebraic computation, and let >>> Enthought continue to do a great job building the Python numerical >>> stack. If at some point users in the numerical Python community >>> really want what Sage has to offer, maybe they will do the extra work >>> to make Sage work for them. If not, they still have a great >>> Sage-compatible platform on which to build their work. No matter >>> what happens users win. >>> >>> Perhaps "numerical Python people" are the right people to make Sage >>> very numericaly Python friendly. The vast majority of Sage developers >>> are not "numerical Python people", and so maybe we have no clue what >>> should be done or how to make Sage what you guys want. I know very >>> well what number theory researcher mathematicians need out of Sage, >>> and I can't imagine that say Dag knows what number theory research >>> mathematicians need, nor should he, and even if I explained it in >>> detail, I wouldn't expect him to do the work of implementing it. >>> >>> The remaining people -- like Brian Granger, Ondrej Certik, etc., -- >>> are clearly already doing what numerical folks want wrt Sage, which is >>> to remove almost everything in Sage that is of interest to 95% of Sage >>> users/developers (groups, rings, fields, matrices, 2d and 3d plotting, >>> etc.)., and making a distribution (SPD) that satisfies precisely their >>> needs. >>> >>> I think I'm not uncomfortable with any of the above, unless of course >>> I'm totally wrong, in which case I would like to know why. >> >> I think something important is missing from the picture: >> >> NumPy/SciPy isn't exactly a majority player either! In large parts of >> science and engineering the big M's (mostly MATLAB), Fortran and to some >> extent C++ are the only tools people have even heard of. (In my department >> few have even heard about Python.) >> >> Looking ahead, it might be that Mathematica is what is likely to supersede >> MATLAB, not any form of Python (according to one source of opinion -- I >> don't know much about this myself). >> >> Now SciPy, EPD, SPD etc. is great for people who know programming, and who >> want a better mix of software engineering and numerics/science packages. >> But, I don't see them ever becoming the simple, unified mathematical >> package which engineers could learn as their first tool in college. (And >> where 1/10 is by default something decent, yet numerics easily >> available...) >> >> I see in Sage (proper, not SPD!) the hope of something I really, really >> want, and which I think SciPy/Enthought/SPD isn't even trying to do. >> Obviously, the SciPy conference people are the selection of people who >> wants what the SciPy stack does though. >> >> The prime audience of a hypothetical numerics-boosted Sage are all of >> those who are likely unaware of the existance of Python in the first >> place, and those obviously haven't voted here (many of them don't even >> have the software skills to attend SciPy 09). >> >> All I can do though is ask you not to close the door for numerics if and >> when somebody steps up to lead the charge. >> >> Dag Sverre >> > > I think you're absolutely 100% right. I received other email offlist > from people pointing out exactly the same point. Many thanks for > the above clarification. I indeed did completely miss the point.
Here's an email I recently got from a Sage users that probably nicely illustrates this point, namely that Sage mainly appeals to those who use MATLAB/Scilab say (not numpy). This is posted here with his permission. from Jordan Alexander to wst...@gmail.com date Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 6:15 PM subject Bravo Sage! Dear William Stein: Writing to congratulate all of you for creating Sage! I am a PhD student of astrophysics (theory and observations of radio recombination lines) and recently started using web-based Sage to explore a a mathematical aspect of my topic. I have gotten more done on this topic using Sage than I thought possible... As previous user of matlab and maple and a current user of scilab, I find Sage a great evolutionary step forward! Much respect, Jordan --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
