Hi everyone, I have been following part of this conversation and I think there is one aspect here that most of you are missing. Sage does not chose... Sage is not a mess on purpose, but it is developed by a big number of people and people develop what they need. So if all developers are researchers, then mostly research aspects are going to be developed, not interface and basic usage. I think most sage users agree that the interface could be made better but as nerd-mathematicians, we are not the ones qualified to do it (and we don't want to cause we don't have the time).
There are two ways of solving this problem: more funding and more diverse users, which both imply a better interface so it looks like an infinite loop. The efforts that William Stein put into SageMathCloud are going into the right direction to leave the loop. He said so himself, he decided to put lots of effort into non-mathematical aspects that, I suppose, do not interest him that much, because he wants to reach more users. Doing so, we can reach non-researcher users, like teachers, who might want to contribute into a better documentation / interface. And of course, if SageMathCloud becomes a viable funding source, then some developers could be hired which would help. Choosing what aspect you want to improve only comes with funding. Otherwise, you can just take whatever people develop... 2014-08-27 17:09 GMT+02:00 kcrisman <kcris...@gmail.com>: > Interesting comment on the post on Facebook. Note the comment about > payment as well. > +++ > In my university, we have been using a sagenb server for three years. We > use it in Calculus/Algebra courses for mathematicians, electrical > ingenieers, agricultural ingenieers, etc. We really use a few basic > commands. If Sage has the 1% functionality or less than Magma, Mathematica, > etc, is not a problem for us. Our main problem is that the manual and > documentation are a mess, lacking of enough examples (please, why not do > something like Mathematica?). Anothe problem is the interface, for > instance, you can not select several cells and make copy/paste (I know this > is posible with sagemathcloud). Or for instance, it is difficult to avoid > that pupils share worksheets in a final individual test. With respect to > functionality we have problems with basic graphics (some of them fixed > today, to be fair). Still having problems solving basic inequalities. > Come on guys, SAGE has A LOT of possibilities that make it for > universities a better choice than Mathematica, Maple, etc. But you should > take care of interface, manuals and help and basic functionalities. I'm > sure that many universities would pay if flexible possibilities of payment > are allowed. > In my opinión SAGE has to choose: > 1. Focus on development of more and new specialiced functionalities. In > this case, its users will be a small group of researchers that don't care > how rough or how time consuming is to make a few instructions to work > properly. Besides, it will be difficult to obtain financing, thus you can > compete only in a Little specialized part (magma, mathematica, maple, GAP > all together is too ambicious). > 2. Focus on basic functionalities on calculus and basic algebra for > teaching. They need to be improved (the power of Maxima is poor in > inequalities, integrals, numeric series... it is not enough at all). They > need also to be user friendly and easy to learn. In this case maybe you can > obtain money from universities and with that money, maybe you can work on > quaternion algebras. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "sage-devel" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
