On May 14, 2007 6:36 PM C Y wrote: > ... > I rather doubt there will be agreement on the best language to > write CASs in, ever. My hope is that at some point most writing > for computer algebra systems will take place in languages designed > to be close to the mathematics (SPAD/Aldor) and have a solid > framework which only needs a little tweaking now and then.
Although I am irrevocably committed to promoting Axiom and Aldor as the appropriate tools for computer algebra, I found Ondrej Certik remarks on this list concerning his reasons for choosing Python for SymPy rather compelling. The reasoning is simple: 1) Python is familiar to millions of current generation programmers, 2) Python is adequate (while admittedly not perfect) for developing a computer algebra system, 3) To move any open source project forward it is necessary to attract the interest of a significant number of potential contributors, 4) There is a considerable resistance on the part of most people to learn a new programming language just in order to participate in a volunteer effort. Therefore SymPy (and Sage). Perhaps Voltaire said it better: "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." (The best is the enemy of the good.) In other words: trying too hard can get you no where. I think that to some extent both Axiom and Lisp suffer from this sort of syndrome. But I do not know what if anything should be done about it. > ... > Bill Page wrote: > > > > You might be surprised how many people I work with who want so > > badly to write their scientific and technical documents in > > Microsoft WORD. I would say that the number of authors who are > > LaTeX users in our environment is currently less than 50% and > > it is falling. :-( > > Gah. Why is that, do you think? My experiences with Word have > seldom been positive. Sheer mass action and familiarity? I might be rather biased but I think the main reason is institutional. Microsoft offers their customers the usual "security blank": you pay us money, we provide you with some level of support. There is no equivalent arrangement possible concerning LaTeX. In contrast it is possible (but still difficult) to promote OpenOffice to corporate instructions just because you can pay Sun for exactly the same thing that you get for free in OpenOffice. It is this corporate "mindset" that keeps a lot of open source software out of the major instutions (outside the university environment). A secondary issue of course is that LaTeX (at least in part by deliberate design) is not normally written in a WYSIWYG style. This leads to a steeper learning curve which one might have to climb more than once depending on how frequently you author publications of this type. I think it is hard to convince most people that this effort is "worth it" (although I personally believe that it is). Finally a third issue is merely a matter of fashion. It is not currently fashionable to use "legacy" tools of this kind. Most people are looking for something new and sexy and easy... even if the result is not necessarily as good as that produced by the "pioneers" (like Knuth). > > Martin Rubey wrote: > > > ... > > > I think it's quite sad that so little documentation has > > > been provided to the algebra sources yet. > > > > Yes I agree. We should discuss why this is the case. > > ... > I believe Axiom can achieve a sufficiently strong environment > that NOT learning it is a bigger inconvenience than learning > it, but the benefits provided must be major. We aren't close > yet. I have serious doubts that we can ever get "there". I can not see any real possibility of making the user interface so seamless, the programming language so "natural", or of obtaining some new mathematical result using Axiom so astounding that a significant number of people will see "MOT learning Axiom" as an inconvenience. > ... > > How can we make doing this attractive to other people? > ... > > How will they obtain appropriate "credit" and peer recognition > > for this work? What other motivation can we offer them? > > That's a point, actually - has anyone published any papers > recently showcasing work done in/for Axiom? That seems like > the most logical pathway to me, although it would mean writing > at least two papers - one for the Axiom codebase and one for > publishing, since those journals generally take copyright... > I find that the Sage developers generally have a very good handle on how to organize this sort of work. First and foremost I think was the original decision to "assimilate" other open source computer algebra projects rather than competing directly with them. (Yes I do mean assimilate in the Star Trek sense: "Resistance is futile". :-) But seriously, I think they have done a number of other things right. See for example "Submission of Refereed Code to SAGE" http://sage.math.washington.edu/sage/jsage Tim Daly has suggested (more or less) this sort of approach for Axiom. I believe something similar is in place for GAP and that was probably the model that Sage is following. If it were somehow (someday) possible to establish this sort of peer review "publication" process for Axiom, I think it might go a long way toward providing a means to "credit" people for their work in a way that means something to both the average university supported researcher and the dedicated open source hobbyist. Regards, Bill Page. _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
