John Ogilvie <ogilvie at cecm.sfu.ca> wrote:
> I was preparing to make a presentation to a Dean of Science about
>improving the effectiveness of teaching mathematics to students of science
>and engineering, for whom mathematics is a tool not a career; I sought to
>demonstrate that for this purpose one does not have to spend big money --
>and especially in 'developing' countries 'big' money is involved -- but
>one can employ Maxima as a viable alternative to expensive software such
>as Maple, Mathematica and MuPAD.
Were you wrong? It seems to me that your point was valid, and a typo somewhere in the documentation would be insufficient to invalidate it.
>However, when that simple plot of
>the definite integral of %e^(-x^2) (without the integration constant)
>failed,
It reminds me of the old maxim, "It's a poor carpenter who blames his tools." One reason for that was that carpenters often made many of their own tools many years ago. Maxima is somewhat like that, too. If you find something wrong, perhaps you can assist in improving it.
>and especially when that barbarism and solecism of 'loose' for
>'lose' appeared on trying to "quit from windows", I was too ashamed of
>maxima to include it in my presentation.
I am much more of a user than a developer of Maxima. I use it to solve real engineering problems even though I also have access to Mathcad, Maple and Mathematica, among others. One reason is that if I find an error (and can fix it), I can contribute this fix to the community. You seem to have overlooked that valuable aspect of Maxima. It's not just that it's "cheap."
> It is disgraceful, anti-intellectual and anti-academic of Robert
>Dodier to tolerate such gross deficiencies. How can somebody with such
>a mentality justify his presence in an institution of so called higher
>education and learning?
I'm sure the Maxima team would cheerfully refund the money you paid for it! Seriously, you seem to misunderstand the nature of open source development. It's a collaborative effort among people who freely devote their valuable time for the greater good. Instead of invective and insult, it's much more socially acceptable to provide a detailed and useful bug report. For example, you still haven't said where the word "loose" appears. A useful bug report would contain such information.
>The end does not jusfify the means.
I've never seen the word "jusfify" before, but it's not really the major thing wrong with your message. The problem is that after having just been served a free gourmet meal prepared by talented chefs, you are complaining about the lack of a wine list and that your salad fork was bent. Sure, Maxima isn't perfect, but very little is. Even emails from dedicated academics have been known to contain typographical errors, for instance.
Ed