On Mar 11, 2009, at 8:17 PM, Jason Grout wrote: > > Alex Ghitza wrote: >> On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Jason Grout >> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> >> wrote: >> >> >> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> wrote: >>> Carl >>> >>> Mathematica seems to have been successful with this approach. I'm >>> curious what were the reasons for its disapproval. Perhaps it was >>> feared it was error prone? >> >> >> Along with the other reasons people are giving, it may be >> helpful to >> remember that it is may be less error-prone in MMA. For example, >> parentheses in Sage can denote function calling as well as >> grouping, >> while they only denote grouping in MMA. With implicit >> multiplication, >> func (x) and func(x) are both valid in Sage, but have different >> meanings.
No, the wouldn't sage: implicit_multiplication(True) sage: sin(pi) 0 sage: sin (pi) 0 Implicit multiplication doesn't turn valid Python into different valid Python. I don't think "a b" being different than "ab" is necessarily a good thing, but being able to write sage: x^3 + 2x^2 - 3x + 1 x^3 + 2*x^2 - 3*x + 1 is really nice. However, the "explicit is better than implicit" and trying to stick close to actual Python arguments are it seems the main points against it. >> In MMA, they both are multiplication, like you'd expect from >> math. >> >> >> ??? so you're saying that in Mathematica sin(x) means sin times x? >> That's not what I'd expect from math... >> >> I must be misreading what you wrote. >> > > Nope, you're correct. That's a nice thing about Mathematica. For a very different definition than "nice" than I have :). Wow! > Function calls are always with square brackets, parentheses are > purely a grouping > construct. Curly braces are always lists, and double square brackets > are indexing (but that's just syntactical sugar). System functions > always use camel-case. I really like the consistency in > mathematica; it > makes it easy to learn and predictable. > > So your example would be Sin[x] in MMA. Internal consistency is good, but consistency with the vast body of mathematical literature out there is pretty valuable as well. - Robert --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
