> The link you provided mention a very valid point. However, despite risking
> writing code that would die, my goal here is to learn. Do you think much can
> be gained by beginning the study of this field on the code of a CAS such as
> Maxima, or perhaps as somebody else mentionned, SAGE?
Probably not that much by just looking at the code, but by working with and
on maxima, posting proposals on this list to discuss them with the
more experienced people and generally participating in this great
project. At least it is my experience that I learn more from the
criticism of others than by debugging my own code ...
HTH,
Harald