?iga Lenar?i? wrote:
>>
>> This is unlikely to be as fast as a lisp compiled to machine code.
>>
>
> I agree. SBCL I think would be the best lisp if it worked properly in
> Windows. It rivals commercial lisps in the speed department, is much
> more CL compliant than GCL and supports CFFI. However I don't know
>
But JVMs with just-in-time compilers are getting better all the time.
And there's way more people improving that than all the people working
on all Lisps combined. (I made that up. I don't actually know.)
>
>>> it would mean that maxima would work on 90% of computers on this
>>> planet (though JVM is not opensource if I'm not mistaken).
>>>
>> 90% of the machines are probably window/intel machines so this has
>> been achieved.
>> (plus the linux/intel machines.)
>>
> Through GCL, yes, but it's rather slow, doesn't support FFI (as far
> as I know) and is more or less a dead project.
>
GCL has an FFI; just not CFFI. I may have seemed dead but I don't think
it's true. And it seems there's new people getting involved of late.
>>
>> I doubt that there is a benefit to using java for plotting compared
>> to using gnuplot, at least for speed.
>>
> I thought speed could be gained from omitting writing the text file
> and loading it into gnuplot - if maxima could plot directly, one
> could simply pass a pointer to an array.. ofcourse I don't know how
For all the graphs I've done, more time was spent computing the points
than actually drawing it. But I also didn't try plotting 10K points
either. (I used to do that sometimes in Matlab.)
>>
>>> I think supporting many different lisps is not good in a sense
>>> that developers' time would be much better spent on other things
>>> and prevents them from implementing new things that wouldn't be
>>> compatible with all the lisps.
>>>
>>>
>> If only people agreed on one religion, think about how much time
>> could be spent on better things.
>>
> Very cynical...
>
>
It might be cynical, but I think it's true. I don't think that running
on multiple lisps has really slowed down development of maxima in any
significant way. It certainly detracts a bit, but, really, would those
people have done other things that they aren't already doing? Would
things have been done significantly sooner? I doubt it.
If there were a mighty Maxima overlord, then, maybe. But if there were,
maybe there'd be even fewer people working on maxima. :-)
Ray