Looking for things to do? A Matlab/Maple/Mathematica to Maxima converter

C Y wrote:

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>That kind of programming demands an altogether different level of
>skill, I think - at least, it requires understanding the subject well
>enough to recognize how to code and debug it. 
>
Actually it may not.  When a procedure is already specified in a 
program, translating it to
another language does not necessarily require knowing the domain of 
application.

> Graphics and plotting is
>not in itself heavy in high mathematics - obtaining the numbers to plot
>can be handed off to another routine. 
>
That is only because people are generally not doing a good job of it. 
You would like a plot
to display all the important features of a function including 
singularities, areas of near-singularities,
etc.  Just sampling at evenly spaced points doesn't do this.  resampling 
at closer spaced
points also doesn't do it.

> Plotting features like proper
>interactive editing of labels, nice gradient color algorithms, etc.
>might not be so crucial mathematically, but they do make for a polished
>product.  If someone doesn't feel they are able to handle the
>mathematical programming, there is certainly no harm in them improving
>the plotting. 
>
Depends on the impact on people's attention.

> Perhaps I'm overestimating the difficulty of programming
>mathematical routines?
>
Yes, for at least some of them. Maybe most of them.

(Actually, another possibility would be to write an interpreter in 
Maxima for Maple language
programs and thereby import all the "free" Maple code.  And , in 
principle, one could
even import the code that one can observe that is part of the Maple 
non-kernel.  A similar
job would be to do Mathematica, and import the free Mathematica code.  
This requires
knowing nothing of the application, but a lot about the semantics of 
Mathematica. or Maple.)


>
>CY
>
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