--- Martin Rubey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > In a sense, Axiom is/was an experiment in the application of > > strongly typed programming languages in computer algebra and > > to be quite honest and blunt, for the most part the experiment > > seems to have failed. :( > > No, most of it has been transformed into MuPad. However, I dare say > that Aldor is superiour to MuPad's language.
I think the jury is still out on strongly typed issues - such systems (including Axiom, in some ways) tend to be designed by experts for experts, and thus it is not surprising that in terms of "market share" they don't do as well. I suspect core technical merit has little to do with such issues, which is quite unfortunate. I think it is becoming increasingly clear that the Axiom/Aldor issue needs to be resolved soon. If serious work with Aldor is to go forward and not result in fragmenting the Axiom community, the licensing issues need to be sorted out. And it sounds from what I've been hearing that we really, really should be using Aldor if at all possible. If MuPad is using a lot of the ideas that went into Axiom, a) that's good and b) we need to do some things significantly different/better than MuPad to attract a userbase. Personally, I think this means trying seriously to merge computer algebra with proof systems, and creating a computational environment were people can know and prove that an answer given by the computer is correct. Just as security is now the great need in operating system and network design, I think verifiable correctness and trustable answers and the great frontier for CAS. Feature sets have matured quite a bit over the years, so competing on features isn't enough (IMHO). If we do that, it's hard to avoid becoming just another CAS, with a few advantages and a few disadvantages compared to other systems. The net result will be people sticking with what they know. (Maple, Mathematica, what have you.) There seem to have been a number of efforts to tie Axiom to proof systems over the years. I would like to learn more about those efforts, why they did or didn't work, and why they weren't integrated into mainstream Axiom. If the difficulties can be overcome, this seems to me to be the way to make Axiom a) something new and different from the user point of view and b) the logical choice for a major theoretical mathematics journal to incorporate into it's system. Past archives could be converted to Axiom pamphlet files (when it makes sense to do so) and we could see if Axiom is up to tracking mathematical developments over a couple of decades. Anyway, just some thoughts, for whatever they may be worth. Cheers, CY P.S. Hey Tim, are there any folks at CMU that are into this kind of stuff? Sounds like something that might appeal to them. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
