On Jul 22, 11:17 am, "Ondrej Certik" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > I just wanted to share why Sage is (or will be soon) useful for me. > > 1) I have a program that I do for my master thesis, it's some finite > elements method + electronic structure calculations and my boss gave > me access to some solaris very fast boxes,
Is that UltraSPARC or x86/x64 (i.e. AMD/Intel) based? I'd be interested what you have access to. > So, mabshoff -- Solaris port +1. Me too wanting that. > 2) There is a nonzero chance I'll be teaching some undergrad calculus > stuff in a year or two and so I was thinking which programs (if any) > I'd use and the constrain will probably be windows. Why should it be windows? I feel Windows has some advantages over Solaris or Linux for general office/home use. In particular, you don't need to be as computer savvy to do certain basic tasks, like install printers. But I feel Unix/Linux systems are a much better platform for scientific computing. If you use the principle of "best tool for the job" then I doubt Windows can be considered the best tool. Why encourage people to a system which seems to have dramatically increased in price in recent years and gets more and more bloated? When I bought my first PC, the hardware cost just over £2000 ($4000) and the operating system license was about £50 ($100). Now, the cost of the OS is a much higher percentage of the total cost. > So, mabshoff -- Sage windows port +1. I know he is on to that. It's obvious that given the large number of windows systems, that it will increase Sage's popularity more than ports to Solaris, HP-UX or any other platform ever will. (Personally I'm more keen on Solaris port, but objectively one would have to say a Windows one would do more for Sage's popularity. And that is important.) > So the above are rather side effects of the main Sage's aim, but those > are things that would make my life much more easier. I just wish I'd had a decent open-source alternative to Mathematica when I started my MSc. Unfortunately I've used Mathematica on/off for the last 17-18 years, so have a lot of time spent using it. I'd rather not have to inflict that anyone else, so they get locked into a system. (I think Mathematica is a good system, just too expensive and proprietary). --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
