On 11/12/10 04:13 PM, rjf wrote:
It seems to me that being free and open source, the first couple of
points,
hardly describes the salient features of Sage, simply because there
are
tens of thousands of other programs, including many many losers,
which are also free and open source. It doesn't grab me.
Wouldn't you describe GIMP, as an image processing
program similar to photoshop, and afterward say it was free?
I would agree with you. I know I've seen some surveys where individuals have
been asked what's the most important advantage of open-source.
Here's one, titled "Key Advantage of Open Source is Not Cost Savings"
http://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id=1043
There is shows "less dependence on vendors" as the most cited advantage. I've
seen other surveys too, and cost is not usually the #1 factor.
I suspect a large number of Sage developers get effectively free access to
Mathematica, MATLAB etc, as there are site licenses at their uni.
It seems to me the obvious first point for "Why Sage" is
that Sage provides access to mathematical software.
Well, there are lots of mathematical software too.
(I also find the mention that it runs on Python to be [probably
unintentionally]
deceptive since, of the hundreds of packages included, many (most?)
are not
running on Python, and thus a pythoner who expects to see open source
python for them will be disappointed.)
I think you have a big bias against python and towards lisp. This comes out in a
lot of what you say. I would think users of Mathematica consider they write in
Mathematica, though the underlying code is probably C, C++, perhaps even Lisp in
many cases.
When people buy cars, the comfort, economy, look, performance, how nice it is to
drive, are likely to be important to them. I don't suppose 99% care if the
engine block is made from steel aluminum. People are usually more interstellar
in the interface they are presented with.
I've yet to see a single complaint from a user that package X is written in C
and not in Python.
Dave
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