Robert Dodier wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The list of participating organizations for Google SOC 2008
> was released a few days ago, and Maxima is not on the list.
> http://code.google.com/soc/2008/
> I haven't received any notice or whatever from Google.
>
> We can try again next year, although maybe someone else
> wants to be in the driver's seat. Clearly I don't know the
> winning formula.
>
> Robert Dodier
> _______________________________________________
> Maxima mailing list
> Maxima at math.utexas.edu
> http://www.math.utexas.edu/mailman/listinfo/maxima
>
>
It is interesting that there don't seem to be lisp (I did not see any
that I recognized) based projects on their list. Except for Python,
most of the stuff is either OS based or C/C++ based. Also, it is worth
noting that many of the scripts for OS stuff like the various versions
of Linux make heavy use of Python. Given that Peter Norvig is their
research director (if he still is), it seems somewhat strange that
Google gives lower priority to lisp developments and applications. At
present it seems that the most important benefit of systems like Maxima
is in education. It seems that Google wants to fund things that have a
short distance to applications. My guess is that until Maxima develops
enough of a user base in universities that applications start to appear,
Google won't support it.
One direction that seems worth developing is the use of high precision
floating point calculations. Rational arithmetic takes forever in
even the simplest types of iterative calculations. But bigfloat
calculations occur fast enough with even precision of 500 or 1000 digits
that I think they would be usable in many situations. In this
connection it would be significant to have tools such as the lapack and
optimization routines available in extended precision.
-sen