On Nov 12, 4:46 pm, "Dr. David Kirkby" <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > 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.
Sage does *not* "run on Python". It would be fair to state that the user language is derived from Python. > > 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. > Sage doesn't run on Windows, so I beg to differ. Bill. -- 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
