Leo Butler wrote:
> I suggested putting Maxima code on these pages to expose Maxima --
> advertising, if you will. Nice, compact, expressive code is a plus.
>
/
/The Maxima (Macsyma) language was originally intended as a user
interface to routines that can do symbolic mathematics.
The language itself is based on Algol 60, the same base as for C,
Pascal, and many other languages.
The language is implemented as an interpreter written in Lisp, and also
as a compiler which compiles into Lisp.
The language is itself not particularly concise, efficient, or even
readable, except for its intended purpose ....
as an interface to routines which do such tasks as simplify, integrate,
factor, solve, etc.
Given the speed and capacity of today's computers (and even telephones!)
I suppose that any programming
language can be run on almost any device for simple tasks without
concern for efficiency, reliability, esthetics, etc.
If the goal is to expose Maxima's language as advertising, and to show
how the various programming constructs work, I suppose it is excusable
to write an unnecessary program (e.g. sort), but if it is to be
favorable advertising it should at least be compact, idiomatic, and
reasonably efficient.
Also, any program written in Lisp can be trivially invoked from Maxima,
and this should probably be noted.
> If you peruse the code already on those pages, you will see that
> these qualities vary between languages and authors.
>
> Leo
>
>