On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 2:17 AM, David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > On 11 July 2010 11:20, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> 2. Sage at EuroScipy: >> >> Another thing -- though most talks mention Cython, not one single talk >> given about actual engineers/scientists doing work even mentioned Sage >> -- and there were over 30 talks. Perhaps there is no penetration at >> all of Sage into scientific computing, at least in Europe. > > I think this is true. One thing in particular engineers want is the > ability to interface to hardware, control that hardware and grab data > from that hardware in real time. GPIB is an interface used on a lot of > professional test equipment. USB tends to be popular for this now, > though the top-flight test equipment will still use GPIB. MATLAB has > an Instrument Control Toolbox for this > > http://www.mathworks.com/products/instrument/supportedio13769.html > > Mathematica does not have anything like this. Perhaps one of the > reasons Mathematica is less popular in engineering than MATLAB.
Yes, this sort of thing is definitely something engineers and scientists not only want by need. I gather that Python is reasonably good at this sort of thing. But Sage doesn't help (or hurt) with this yet. > > Labview, which is not something Sage aims to be an alternative too, is > another tool which is very good at interfacing to hardware. There was one talk about Labview. It's also a sort of "visual programming language". I got the strong impression that it is something people who don't know how to program use, and something people who *do* know how to program (even a little) loathe. It's also very, very expensive. > There are open-source drivers for the National Instruments GPIB board > for Linux and FreeBSD (at least). To my knowledge there are none for > OS X or Solaris. The Solaris drivers for the National Instruments GPIB > card cost a small fortune. > > Another thing enginners want is tools to design filters - both > analogue and digital. I suspect there may be some python code written > for this. > >> Perhaps >> this will change in the next few years, given that NSF looks highly >> likely to fund this NSF grant http://wstein.org/grants/compmath09/ > > Good idea. It seems to me that Sage is more like Mathematica than it > is MATLAB. In engineering, the use of MATLAB is very common, but > hardly anyone uses Mathematica. Sage is more like Mathematica than Matlab, but... the Matplotlib + Python + Numpy + Scipy + Cython + Ipython stack is much more like Matlab than Mathematica. And Sage includes everything in that stack. So the situation is not so clear at all. -- William > > Dave > > -- > To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > URL: http://www.sagemath.org > -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
