Hi
I recently came across maxima. My knowledge of lisp is zero. My
platform is Linux.
I have noticed that a relatively simple function (defined as a
function of 3-4 variables, in terms of some other defined functions
(using := notation) and atomic variables (using : notation) ), plotted
against one of the variables, keeping the rest fixed, takes an
unexpected amount of time (I have been exposed to Mathematica and Matlab
earlier) to plot. So far, on a 700 MHz Celeron machine running
imaxima+maxima(5.9.0)+gcl(2.5.2), I have not been able to complete the
plot (using plot2d). The evaluation of the function at any given point
is actually quite fast. I have tried compile, compile_file and floatdefunk.
It is possible to compile maxima source files into *.o and
*.LISP files. I tried to create an executable (hoping thereby that the
executable would be executed faster) using ld -o test.exe test.o
<maxima-lib>, but the resulting executable exits with a Segmentation fault.
I understand that as a beginner, it is entirely possible to overlook
something very basic. Hence the question.
At another level, how does maxima performance compare with
Mathematica / Matlab ?
Thanks,
MS