--- Dan Stanger <dan.stanger@ieee.org> wrote:
> Barton Willis wrote:
>
> > Conjecture: Suppose you rewrote large chunks of Maxima in Maxima.
> By the
> > time you finished
> > (1) fixing bugs and inefficiencies in the translator,
>
> This needs to be done anyway, and for all user code, not just
> rewriting maxima.
I agree - if the translator is to be a feature it should be accurate.
> > (2) writing Maxima-level interfaces to many
> > functions in the Maxima core and to other common Lisp functions,
> you'd be
> > sufficiently competent in Lisp to have done all your work in Lisp
> in the
> > first place.
>
> I am not suggesting that this be done. I am suggesting that there
> may be some optimum seperation of maxima and lisp, that makes it
> easier to maintain and enhance the code.
Actually, given proper commenting and documentation, I'd be surprised
if it's an issue in the long run. Let an author express their ideas
however they are most comfortable doing so, and if it looks like there
will be a significant advantage in having it in another format it can
be converted over.
> > I had many reasons for rewriting specfun in Lisp (now orthopoly);
> some were good
> > some neutral (insomnia, long, dark, cold Nebraska winters, etc).
> But
> >
> > (1) Yes, the mathematical parts of orthopoly could be expressed
> more
> > compactly in
> > infix notation; however (a) surprisingly little of orthopoly is
> > mathematical stuff
>
> I wonder if this is a indication of maxima in general, that most of
> the code is not mathematical, it handles other things.
Probably depends on what he's doing with the package.
> > (b) I generated most (probably all) of the lengthy mathematical
> prefix expressions
> > in orthopoly automatically (via ?print and other tricks).
> >
> > (2) Floating point complex number arithmetic is slow in Maxima; I
> think
> > it would be difficult to make it fast. By rewriting in Lisp,
> orthopoly is
> > able to
> > use Lisp complex numbers.
>
> It may a good idea to change this anyway.
I would tend to agree.
> > (3) Maxima arrays are unpleasant to use (that's my opinion) and
> > inefficient (I believe, but I haven't tried any tests so I could be
> wrong)
>
> It is quite difficult to use them in symbolic computations, and
> impossible without obscuring the code with arraymake in many places.
> Also the commercial macsyma is broken worse than maxima in this
> regard.
Is this a design flaw or bugs?
CY
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