On 28 May, 05:39, rjf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I sent a note to boothby, asking that he forward it to sage-devel if
> my cc didn't work, which it didn't. But he didn't forward it. That's
> ok, I guess.
> In the unlikely event that you want to read the whole back-and-forth,
> please contact me or Tom.
>
> But there is one point that I think is worth discussing, and that is
> Tom's contention, not entirely novel, that the reason for open-
> source :. "It's about proof; you can't prove a result with
> Mathematica, since one can't readily inspect the source."
>
> my reply, which you may chew on...
>
> You assume that seeing the source code is either necessary or
> sufficient for a proof. Can you prove that?
>
> Read the paper by Demillon,Lipson, Perlis, about proofs and social
> processes.
>
> How do you know that a program written in python, is correct unless
> you prove the compiler/interpreter is correct, the hardware it runs on
> is correct down to the gate level, there are no hardware glitches, the
> memory is proved, etc.
I agree, you can't prove the correctness. Also from a practical point
of view, even assuming the hardware, compliers, python etc are all ok,
not that many people will inspect the Sage code to see how a proof of
interest to them has been performed.
Even if the code is correct, cosmic events can flip a bit. PROOF, in
the mathematical sense is not practical.
BUT experience with many pieces of software shown that having the
source open tends to help find bugs.
The Sage bug database is open too. If you know you used Bessel
functions in version X of Sage, it would be worth looking at the bug
list and see if there are any bugs related to Bessel functions which
have been fixed since you used it. If so, one would be wise to
investigage whether that bug might have messed up your results. You
could not do this with Mathematica. WRI don't tend to publish their
bugs. Your good friend VB from the Ukraine has shown numerous bugs in
Mathematica, and even more in Maple.
One can't even compare Mathematica to other software on Mathgroup -
how draconian can that be? Even WRI employees can't post there without
their posts being vetted.
I don't use Sage myself, but the fact it is open-sourece would give me
more confidence than with the commercial computer algebra systems.
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