Ben Woodruff wrote: > Hi all. This is my first post to the discussions groups I've been > following for the last 4 months. I used Sage in my first semester > calculus class this last semester, and plan to move every class I can > over to Sage during the next few years. Giving the students something > they can use anywhere they go without forking over thousands of > dollars has a huge advantage.
Sorry I can't answer your question. I'm not a Sage user, though I've spent a lot of time porting Sage to Sun's Solaris operating system, so I will be able to use it, on what I consider is an excellent operating system. But I could not resist commenting on one of your points here. Giving students something they can use outside university is a huge plus which teaching Sage has compared to teaching Mathematica. I learned Mathematica as a postgraduate researcher and used it at university quite a bit. Then when I left university, suddenly I find few places use it. Most places can't afford to, or insist staff use something cheaper. (At Marconi Optical Components I had to use Mathcad if I wanted maths software.) A hunt for jobs mentioning Mathematica on job sites brings up very few hits. Learning Mathematica is a bit like learning your way around campus - useful while you are at university, but your might as well forget it once you leave. In my honest opinion, it is almost irresponsible for universities to teach Mathematica. I'm not a fan of Microsoft's products (I use Sun's Solaris rather than Microsoft Windows most of the time). But nobody can accuse schools of being irresponsible teaching children Word or Excel, as those skills are wanted by employers. The same can not be said for Mathematica. I know little about Maple or Macsyma and accept that MATLAB is wanted by a number of employers. Of course there are other advantages/disadvantages to open-source software, but here is not the place for a open-source vs closed-source debate. Dave -- To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-support+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URL: http://www.sagemath.org
