On Jul 7, 2009, at 12:14 PM, Martin Rubey wrote: > Dear all, > > I would like to try to build constructively on the following statement > and reply: > > William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> writes: > >> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 9:16 AM, rjf<fate...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> In terms of support, one major disadvantage of Sage, I think, is >>> that >>> significant pieces of the implementation apparently consists of >>> pieces of code that are used as black boxes, and that the >>> Sagemeisters proudly disavow knowledge of. Thus a bug traced to >>> Maxima is unfixable "until we rewrite Maxima in python". > >>> [...] >> >> There is precisely one component of Sage that has the above property, >> and that is Maxima. There are absolutely no other such components. >> Fortunately this won't be the case forever. > > It seems to me that this conversation is not about a technical > problem, > but rather a human one, and I think (since affected myself) that it's > even more important. > > It seems to me that sage is a huge success. Part of it's success > story > is very likely the (in my opinion: wise) decision to use other > software > as is, at least as a start. > > However, as sage matures, more and more porting work starts to be > done, > at least this is what appears to be the case to me.
I think this is accurate--Sage's focus has certainly moved more to refining and extending things (as opposed to including things, as it was in the beginning). As it's been said, some amount of porting and re-writing is a natural part of the software development process. Also, as Sage naturally attracts Python developers, there is inherent value in having algorithms and packages written in Python (all other things being equal). However, not everything belongs in Sage's core library and standing on top of other quality packages is one of the things that makes Sage so great. > Now, how does it *feel* if you wrote or contributed to a package, > which > is in the end ported (by somebody else) to sage? (Especially, if the > original package is not that much of a "community" success.) How does > it *feel* if sage uses a package for years, but with the declared goal > to replace it as soon as possible? I have to say I too have sometimes been offended with the zeal some people have shown with replacing/reming certain packages, maxima among them. Personally, I am very excited about the new Pynac symbolics--it was pretty pitiful to have to fire up a lisp interpreter (nothing against lisp) and communicate via a pexpect interface to discover that x + x becomes 2*x. On the other hand, being able to use the large body of deeper maxima functions (irregardless of how much or when anything has been re-implemented) right from Sage is a valuable thing. - Robert --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
