On 08/24/10 02:06 PM, kcrisman wrote:
Anyway, I think (as you have correctly noted before) we have a bit of
a culture clash between software engineering and mathematics.
<SNIP>
Just have patience with those of us who aren't from a software
background - and trust that we are trying hard to internalize your
lessons, but that we have more immediate needs to fill as well for our
next course or paper. I think that just as Minh's messages about
documentation are slowly taking hold in the whole ecosystem, so are
yours about software engineering.
- kcrisman
Just to make a point, my own background is not software engineering. My first
degree is in electrical and electronic engineering, my masters in microwaves and
optoelectronics and my PhD in medical physics. Apart from a very brief spell
(about 6 months), I have never worked in the IT industry.
I first became aware of the subject of software engineering when an Australian
guy joined the department I worked at University College London. Russel's task
was to develop some hardware and software for a research project. He quite
rightly realised that developing software "by the seat of your pants" as he
called it was not the way to go about it. So before starting to write the
software, he purchased a book on the subject of software engineering.
I never gave this topic much more thought until I started working on Sage. I
then because to realise that Sage needs to take a more professional approach to
the development, as it seems a bit add-hock to me.
My own view is I'd rather have something with less features, which I could rely
on, than lots of features I don't trust. When there is little in the way of
project management, and a culture of not doing anything properly, then attitude
tends to spread like a virus.
I'm currently running the doctests 100 times on a machine, with the same build
of Sage that passed all doc tests. This is an interesting failure I observed:
sage -t -long devel/sage/doc/en/constructions/linear_algebra.rst
**********************************************************************
File
"/export/home/drkirkby/sage-4.5.3.alpha2/devel/sage-main/doc/en/constructions/linear_algebra.rst",
line 202:
sage: A.eigenvalues()
Expected:
[3, 2, 1]
Got:
[3, 1]
**********************************************************************
The tests have been run 41 times now, and only once has that test failed. The
answer looks quite reasonable, but I assume is wrong, as the other 40 times the
code gave the expected value. It's these sorts of things that concern me. Why
should the same build of Sage, running exactly the same doctests each time, not
produce repeatable results?
There's been a few failures, though that is the only one I've noticed where the
answer looks very reasonable, but is in fact incorrect.
Dave
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