William Stein wrote: > I personally Python well suited to mathematical computation,
No problem with any computation involving literal objects. It's the symbolic stuff that's lacking. > and at least the approach in Python regarding undefined variables > is consistent with every other general purpose programming > language I've ever used. Well, this is an opportunity for Sage to do something usefully different, then. > But it is definitely different than Mathematica. Apparently Maple also does not require variables to be declared (to judge by their quick start guide). Neither does Maxima/Macsyma nor MuPAD nor PARI/GP ftr. > What is wrong? That statement Justin made or that he made it at all? It's a classic strawman. There's no evidence whatsoever in the original message that the o.p. (Seberino) has assumed that he knows "all there is to know about how to use a Computer Algebra System". > The first line of section 2 of the tutorial (about calculus) is > "The solve function solves equations. To use it, first specify some variables; > ..." and gives an example of using var. > > I guess this suggests that one needs to use var. This would > be a good place in the tutorial to insert a sentence that if you > don't use var then you will get a NameError, and that this > behavior is different than in Mathematica, and there is no > mode to change this, since it's a basic feature of how the Python > language works. Well, that would be an improvement. The need to declare variables is different from various other packages, not just Mathematica. Some explanation should go in the documentation for var itself as well. FWIW Robert Dodier --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
