This reaction comes from William Stein:
Jaap
On Fri, 02 Feb 2007 06:15:06 -0800, Jaap Spies <j.spies at hccnet.nl> wrote:
> > -------- Original Message --------
> > Subject: Re: [Maxima] Python
> > Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2007 20:24:12 +0800
> > From: Valery Pipin <pip at iszf.irk.ru>
> > To: maxima at math.utexas.edu, Jaap Spies <j.spies at hccnet.nl>
> > References: <45C2EBA2.8030203 at uhasselt.be> <45C3271B.5060007 at hccnet.nl>
> >
> > Jaap Spies wrote:
>> >> SAGE works the other way around. Python is the glue to join not only
>> >> maxima, pari, singular, matplotlib and many other open source programs.
>> >> It is even possible to use the three big M's, Maple, Mathematica and MAGMA
>> >> via a standard interface. A Matlab interface is on its way.
>> >> Python/SAGE is a mainstream, modern programming language.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/
>> >> http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/components.html
> > I'd love to try it if all those components were distributed separately.
> > There are many reason for this
> > 1)84Mb ? source code and your site is slow
You might try one of the many mirror sites that are listed at the
bottom of this site: http://sage.math.washington.edu/sage/
> > 2)The particular user need only a few componets, e.g. , I would use
> > python, numpy and maxima, mathplotlib.
I've found that this is generally not true of the intended audience for SAGE.
Also, the whole point of SAGE is that it's an integrated package that works
*together* -- and is tested together. Frequently in SAGE one might do a little
calculation that appears like your just using Python but behind the scenes
it is using a component not listed above in 2, e.g., maybe Singular or PARI.
E.g., Singular does multivariate poly factorization quite quickly.
> > 3) Most linux distribution have python, numpy, maxima and etc.
It's unclear, but probably most SAGE users are not only Linux users.
Also, the version of python deployed in most linux/osx etc distributions
is too old. Most importantly, getting something like to SAGE to work
with a wide range of versions of Python/numpy/maxima/40 other packages/
is essentially impossible. In contrast, by distributing and testing known
versions together, it's actually possible.
> > 4) Sage use clisp to compile maxima (at least it was so 1 year ago). This is
> > really slowest choice. I admit that many other people can prefer clisp over
> > sbcl and cmucl. But it is always better to have a choice in this option
> > because maxima gives this choice.
Even after you download and build (or install) SAGE, you can always just
remove SAGE_ROOT/local/bin/maxima and if another maxima is in your PATH
(built against a different lisp) it will be used instead. The same is true
for most of the other components of SAGE.
William