On 11/14/10 07:00 PM, Tim Daly wrote:
I find it amusing that mathematicians are being told that
a math-specific language is a liability. Mathematics is,
after all, a specialized language that took me years to
learn.
I asked RJF what languge he thought the interface should be. As 10 options I
consider might be viable choises where
1) Create an entirely new language.
2) Python
3) Maxima
4) A Mathematica like interface
5) A MATLAB like interface
6) A Maple-like interface
7) A Magma-like interface
8) Lisp
9) Q - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_%28equational_programming_language%29
10) Pure http://code.google.com/p/pure-lang/ is another possibility,
but that did not exist until 2008, but is based on Q, which existed
prior to Sage
He failed to response. (He would rather tell me on the Maxima list that I can
create an infinite set of integers to do some testing.) But that is to be
expected from Richard - a signal to noise ratio of about -30 dB.
But what do you think is the ideal language for a user interface? There have
been endless attempts at cleating new languages (#1 above). I've even done it
myself, to the extent of writing a couple of hundred lines of code for lex and
yacc. But it's a very difficult problem to get right, and quite honestly
requires a set of sills I don't think a single Sage developer processes.
"Pure" seems an interesting language to me. It is headed by someone with both a
a maths and a computer science background. But the number of developers can be
counted on one hand I think.
I agree with William, the best language does depend on the problem. I use both
Mathematica and MATLAB and its pretty clear to me that they have their strengths
and weaknesses, and one language is more suited to some problems than the other.
There are some mathematical tasks that I think are best done with Labview -
something totally different to Sage, Axiom, Mathematica, Maple, MATLAB and I
assume Magma too, though I have never used Magma.
The "glue" language is another issue altogether.
The biggest benefit for Python has seemed to be the number of developers. I
simply don't think that would exist if using Lisp, Pure or something else a bit
more obscure.
Dave
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