C Y wrote:
>One question I would like to bring up - since almost
>none of us are familiar with the current maxima code
>base, and few of us are qualified in Lisp, is there
>any way we could "translate" maxima into another, more
>widely used language?
Please, let's not do this. Why does it matter if the language is
widely used? Should we use VB? I hope not! I think that lisp is a
perfect tool for the job.
>1) C/C++ are in my experience widely taught and used
>by schools, researchers, and other open source people,
>while Lisp programming is a relatively rare skill.
>Since any open source project needs as many good
>coders as possible, the odds are we would attract more
>help if our language were a little more commonly used.
Lisp skill is not that rare a skill; and you will in all likelihood
find more good programmers in the lisp community than among the C/C++
coders coming out from school.
>2) We might be able to convince people who are writing
>routines for academic research projects or other high
>end applications to write libraries which could be
>added to maxima. Since as far as I know (those who
>know better feel free to correct me) most such
>projects don't code in Lisp nowadays, the odds of our
>being able to make use of those efforts is relatively
>small, barring some ability of Lisp to interface with
>other languages.
If there are libraries we want to put to use in maxima (LAPACK comes
to my mind e.g.) that are not written in lisp, we can use the ffi of
the underlying lisp to interface to the code. (I'm not an expert on
gcl, but any other lisp I know - CMU CL, clisp, Allegro, Lispworks -
has a good ffi. So that is not a problem).
What I would welcome is a move to make maxima easier to install on
other lisps, not only on gcl. That would have a lot more benefit to it
than a move away from lisp to some other language.
Andreas
.
--
Wherever I lay my .emacs, there´s my $HOME.