On 1 dic, 14:56, David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > What has notation got to do with my analogy.? It's the correctness > that matters.
For a paper, it is. I would never argue with an author about the particular notation she uses in a paper, provided it is consistent, but for a ticket, notation (syntax) is very important, since that is the syntax we'll all be using from then on. A journal is different from Sage in that the journal consists of independent pieces of text, while Sage is a cohesive piece of software. If Alice "publishes" any kind of correct code in Sage, this might conflict with code by Bob, something you don't see in a journal, where they can use incompatible notation. And anyway, reading submitted code is important for many other reasons. So an author writes correct code. It passes all tests. But maybe the style is not standard. It will be harder to read in the future. Maybe you know a better algorithm. Maybe it was written in python, but you can do it in cython. Maybe it relies on certain non- canonical behaviour that may break in the future, and you spare a problem in a few years. Good code is way beyond working code. Remember anyone is encouraged to participate in the developement process. That is great, but it means someone else have to read the code, and help the author improve, one step at a time. In a random ticket from a new contributor, you can expect correct code, but in my experience you can expect improvable code, too. I've been tempted to submit patches for several silly things. The first time, I was excited to contribute and I can swear, it worked, but it's better out of Sage. Eventually, it was done the right way. In software, correctness is very low fence. In a project such as Sage, with lots of packages written in different languages, you're asking for trouble if you accept any code that passes all tests. -- 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
