On 9/27/07, Georg Muntingh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Monday I will give an introductory talk about SAGE for the algebra
> group in Oslo. The contents of the presentation can be found at
> http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df56gnzv_15cp38pw , and the slides can
> be found at http://folk.uio.no/georgmu/SAGE.pdf . Any feedback would
> be greatly appreciated.
Excellent talk and graphics! When you're done with it, can I add a
copy of it here:
http://sagemath.org/why.html
A few specific comments:
* This sentence in "The Solution" is maybe confusion: "In fact, all
the systems that I just listed are included in SAGE, and many more."
It's better to say something more like: "In fact, most of the free
systems that I just listed are included in SAGE, and many more, and
the commercial systems can be used from SAGE."
* "One characteristic of the mathematical community using mathematical
systems, is that a large part of the users is a potential contributor.
"
-->
"One characteristic of the mathematical community using mathematical
systems, is that many users are potential contributor."
* FYI: Maple also uses GMP. I don't think Mathematica does (based on
my limited testing showing it to be slower at integer arithmetic).
* '"proof=true" or "proof=false"' --> '"proof=True" or "proof=False"'
(capitalize).
* CoCoA -- Unfortunately, there isn't actually a working Sage <--> CoCoA
interface of any form yet. There is work in progress in this direction, but
it isn't done. There also isn't much of a Reduce interface (though I've
been told one is under development). There is a good
MuPAD interface, so you could replace Reduce by MuPAD in that slide.
You could also throw in MATLAB.
* "The examples that take too much time are marked by a commented line
"# long time", and these are not checked." -- actually, they are
checked, but just not nearly as frequently. Every few weeks or so,
I'll test those to overnight.
* If you do
sage: search_src('sage:')
you'll see most of the of the doctest input lines / examples. There are
32,799 such lines right now.
* "since a new version of SAGE is released about every other week, "
There have been over 150 released in less than 2 years
(http://sagemath.org/dist/src/), so it would
be more accurate to wrote "since a stable new version of SAGE is
released on average once a week,"
* "SAGE includes, for instance, more functionality on modular forms
than any other system," I wish this were true. Unfortunately, I'm
not completely
confident in that statement yet, since I spent years adding a lot functionality
to Magma for modular forms! A safer statement, which I am confident
about, and fits with your earlier examples is: "SAGE includes, for instance,
more functionality for computing with L-series of elliptic curves than
any other system,"
* "Its development mailing list gets about fifteen messages a day and
has eighty regular contributors." I just looked and there were an
average of *26* messages
per day during the last 2 months. There are 194 members, but I don't
know how many regularly contribute.
* I personally release early and often because it is vastly easier
than releasing late and infrequently. It's just easier. Doing a
release every week with a few dozens patches, is *vastly* easier than
doing a release in 2-3 months with a few hundred (or thousand)
patches. With a project the size of Sage with so much activity going
on, after 2 months without a release people would be working on very
different branches of Sage, so merging their changes would be a
nightmare.
With early and often everybody wins.
* "As a matter of fact, the SAGE Days 5 is being held at the Clay
Mathematics Institute as we speak. " ---> delete "the", so "As a
matter of fact, SAGE Days 5 is being held at the Clay Mathematics
Institute as we speak." You could also mention Sage Days 6 in Bristol
in November: http://wiki.sagemath.org/days6
* "Even if you think about how impossible the whole idea is of
combining all these complex systems to create I supersystem," I
think the "I supersystem" should be "one supersystem".
Great talk! I'm convinced. I want to become a Sage developer! :-)
-- William
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