XML, why Mma is popular, was...Re: [Maxima] Lunch with George Carrette

Stavros Macrakis wrote:

> I find the lesson instructive, but not disturbing.  It is not enough to
> have a good (or even the best) product.  You must convince potential
> users to try it, and then adopt it.  You must make the product not only
> be good, but appear good.  It's probably a good idea to throw away the
> first draft (SMP was Wolfram's first attempt to improve on Macsyma,
> Mathematica his second -- was Macsyma rearchitected in the meantime?).

He also had the benefit of learning from the experience of other similar
systems.  At that time, there was also Reduce, MuMath and maybe Maple.