Dear Sir,
I am writing as a natively English-speaking maths student, so by your
standards I presume I am able to make intelligent remarks about the
program.
Maxima is an extremely powerful and flexible tool with which one can
attack a wide variety of mathematical and scientific problems. I am
using it now on my laptop to help me derive asymptotic expansions
around singular points of a differential equation. This equation is not
particularly pleasant and thus I would expect to make so many algebraic
errors as to be unable to get the correct result doing this problem
with just pen and paper.
Whilst grammar errors (in any language) in any software should be
fixed, I think your correct course of action yesterday morning would
have been to calmly decide whether this error made it impossible for
you to carry on using the software. If yes, and you didn't wish to have
a look at the code to find it, that's fine. You have paid _no money_
for the right to use this software and given the authors nothing.
Therefore, they owe you no debt of apology for
> that barbarism and solecism of 'loose' for 'lose'
I would also point out that, even though your email extremely
unpleasant in tone, a mere 9 hours after you sent it, Robert Dodier had
clearly bothered to find what caused your plotting problem. Another
hour and a bit later, there was a fix. Clearly, this is a development
process and piece of software that it is completely reasonable and
rational to be "too ashamed about" to include in your presentation?
I would finally point out that the most recent email that you wrote, to
which this is a reply, is written in the language of a Slashdot troll.
I might myself ask how "somebody with such a mentality [sic!]" as to
write such an email can "justify his presence in an institution of so
called higher education and learning?"
Yours sincerely,
Rupert Swarbrick
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