On 31/08/2008, at 9:46 AM, Robert Dodier wrote:
>
> Robert Bradshaw wrote:
>> On Fri, 29 Aug 2008, Jason Grout wrote:
>>> Jason Merrill wrote:
>
>>>> The Mathematica syntax is Hold[Integral[x,{x,0,1}]]. This remains
>>>> unevaluated until it is wrapped with an Evaluate[]. The nice thing
>>>> about this syntax is that it works for any kind of expression (not
>>>> just integrals).
>
>>> So maybe we could have something like a FormalExpression class
>>> whichdoes the same thing (has an argument that it doesn't evaluate).
>
>> Not sure how one would do this in Python though... (Maybe via
>> preparsing somehow, it would still be pretty hard...)
>
> From the direction this discussion has taken I'm guessing that
> nobody here is aware that selective evaluation is trivial in Lisp,
> and Maxima.
I'm aware... ;-) And I think that's why we Mathematica fanboys are
going on about it. It is also why I've floated ideas about why I
think lisp could be important to sage.
> This kind of stuff yanks my chain in a bad way, unfortunately.
> I gather it is more interesting to reinvent the wheel than learn
> how to use existing, unfamiliar wheel technology.
Few of the core sage developers particularly know, or want to know,
lisp. William is AIUI uninterested in it mostly because he can't have
a fast (i.e. shared memory) link between lisp and python. Which is
sensible.
I've made a few slightly snarly comments about reimplementing lisp,
partly and badly, but I was half serious. What I would like to see is
(1) a standard way of representing arbitrary information in sage,
using expression trees like in lisp
(2) that gradually becoming the standard way of passing information
around
(3) when it gets to actually doing things, doing the work in 'current
sage'
That's not a very concrete idea because I don't know sage or python
particularly well. It might be too late for sage to do that.
> What makes
> it worse is that there is talk of copying Maple and Mathematica
> notation, which both have all sorts of warts. Blechh.
Well, I'm going to miss some of the more concise notation of
mathematica. There isn't much doubt IMHO that mathematica at least is
mostly well thought-out. But I don't think anyone should necessarily
copy it as an integral part of sage.
D
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