On Jul 11, 12:20 pm, 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. Perhaps > this will change in the next few years, given that NSF looks highly > likely to fund this NSF granthttp://wstein.org/grants/compmath09/ > > Sage was only mentioned in the first keynote by Langtangen, in which > he explained that installing Python for his students is very hard. > His personal solution -- force the students to install Ubuntu, either > natively or in a Virtual Machine. Full > stop.http://picasaweb.google.com/wstein/20100710EuroscipyDay1#549240022431... > He made some (funny) jokes about being a dictator. > > I personally disagree with his suggested "solution". Maple, Matlab, > Mathematica do better, and so can we.
I'm not sure if he meant it is a good solution, just an adequate solution that works *now*. Here's some reasons Sage wouldn't work for Langtangen (according to his talk): - He mentioned several Python's being around causing a mess as a problem, Sage adds to this problem. When using a clean VirtualBox, there is guaranteed to only be one Python installed and available, which solved his biggest problem. - LD_LIBRARY_PATH means people must either mess big-time with environment variables, or start using "sage -python" and "sage - ipython" (in which case all the examples about using Python from the internet, scripts with shebangs "#!/usr/bin/env python" etc. stops working). I'm NOT saying Sage can or should do anything about it, just commenting on the situation. I personally think Langtangen is much better off with VirtualBox than Sage at the time being. I personally hope David C.'s efforts will lead somewhere where the science/engineering packaging distribution mess is fixed. BTW, the problem one is trying to solve is much more complex than what MATLAB and Mathematica is dealing with -- I fully expect that whatever MATLAB does would break down under the weight of hundreds of special purpose, openly-developed and often-changing packages as well! (I know Ondrej claims the SPKG system is perfect also for engineers, but I see the FEMHub project as a direct contradiction to that -- what if I want a package from both FEMHub and Sage? It doesn't work easily, out of the box *now*.) (I was unsure whether this should go here or sage-flame, but decided on here...I hope this doesn't end up in a long discussion.) Dag Sverre -- 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
