----- Mensaje reenviado -----
De: Manuel Pedrinero rossetil <pdx7l1 at yahoo.es>
Para: Richard Fateman <fateman at eecs.berkeley.edu>
Enviado: S?bado 28 de abril de 2012 17:48
Asunto: Re: [Maxima] julia language
________________________________
Dear Prof. Fateman, I admire your work in maxima.?
I don't participate in the Julia language, I am only a curious person, that should'nt spend so much time learning new programming languages (lisp, clojure, shen, lua, python, ruby, R, Mathematica, ...) .? I teach Calculus and Statistics and I use maxima in class.? But for my students a mixture of maxima and R should be ideal.? I am Spanish and I admire the work of Mario Riiotorto (the statistics) and I lurk in comp.lang.lisp and gmane -
maxima, but I don't code a single line, that seems to be my fate.? I wish some efforts like clpython, matlisp, incanter, clr don't die, but sadly the only way to survive is to join efforts.
?Well, I just read in the julia-dev list this about interacting Julia and Lisp (femlisp) so, using for example sbcl and julia seems not to be such a difficult task, but I recognize that I will not write a single line of code, just play reading posts (this is my free time).
?Anyway, is wonderful there are people like maxima team that makes this project a reality.
?Best to all of you.
femtolisp and julia interoperability
Opciones
? 2 mensajes?-?Contraer todos ?-? Traducir todo al Espa?ol
Celil ? Ver perfil ? Traducir al Espa?ol ?M?s opciones 28 abr, 07:29
Is it currently possible to call functions implemented in femtolisp
from julia, and vice versa?
Celil
?
Jeff Bezanson ? Ver perfil ? Traducir al Espa?ol ?M?s opciones 28 abr, 08:53
It's possible, but there aren't any easy interfaces for it. It's
considered an implementation detail of the compiler. src/ast.c has
examples of calling in both directions.
De: Richard Fateman <fateman at eecs.berkeley.edu>
Para: Manuel Pedrinero rossetil <pdx7l1 at yahoo.es>
CC: "maxima at math.utexas.edu" <maxima at math.utexas.edu>
Enviado: S?bado 28 de abril de 2012 17:05
Asunto: Re: [Maxima] julia language
On 4/28/2012 6:27 AM, Manuel Pedrinero rossetil wrote:
The people of julia language are trying to make a language that can replace? R and Matlab.? Lisp is used to manipulate the AST, there is
>a small Lisp developed by one of the core members of the group (femlisp) available in github.
>
>
>
>I think that julia could be a good replacement for the maxima language.? Julia can use LAPLACK and other libraries, and recently
>
>in the list there has been some talks about CPYTHON developers trying to link with julia.
Pro:? Since Maxima is implemented in Lisp, it would seem that femlisp would be unnecessary to implement
Julia? in the same core image as Maxima.? So an additional
read-eval-print loop that looks like Julia
but has the Maxima system as its "library" should be simple, and
someone familiar with Lisp could
rapidly implement at least a demonstration of Julia interfaced to
Maxima.
Con: Many people with experience using Maxima or Macsyma have
suggested improvements or changes to the language.
Are you aware of these issues?? If you are not aware of them, your
new language design
might not address them at all.
A glance through the Julia tutorial suggests that it is not
especially supportive of computer algebra,
since it lacks an arbitrary precision integer type.
?Access to libraries for numerics, graphics, web access,
parallel constructs, etc are generally well known to Lisp
implementors; unfortunately the level of
support and the details differ between implementations. It is not
clear to me that Julia's features
in this regard would be a big selling point in any case, unless you
re-implemented all of Maxima
in Julia, not just the front end Maxima language.
Perhaps you could share with us your reasoning as to why the maxima
language needs to be replaced.
If you have limited experience with symbolic computing, it really
doesn't work to just claim that
?"Julia is good for whatever you are doing, whatever you are doing",
since it probably reflects
a sentiment not a reason:? for example,
"I like Julia, and I really don't know what you are doing, but maybe
you'll like it too."
>
>For julia developers adding symbolics capabilities could be very interesting.?
>
Probably the case.? The legacy of Lisp in Julia's metaprogramming seems to have
good intentions, but it is hard to get enthusiastic about the
plethora of notations
inherited from c, c++, java, ... unless one is first familiar with
them and not lisp
z.head?? instead of? (first z)?? or (car z)
z.args?? instead of (rest z) or (cdr z)
The target audience for Macsyma/ Maxima language is usually
considered
(a) people who do not know other programming languages (like C or
Lisp) but are familiar
with mathematical notation and would like to continue using it as
much as possible.
? and
(b) people who (probably knowledgeable about PLs) would like to
present
programs that are relatively concise and easy to explain to persons
familiar
principally with mathematical notation.? That is, there should be a
minimum of
programmer-ese.? (like foo++, a//b, glub.args ...).
For maxima developers, being able to interface with R, C and fortran could be also very interesting,
>
>so I think this is a win-win situation.
>
Probably not, as I said above, unless the back-end is written in Julia, this won't happen
via Julia.? It could continue to happen (in all dialects of Common
Lisp supporting
Maxima except, apparently GCL), simply by using Lisp
foreign-function interfaces.
The success of a new programming language does not seem to depend so
much
on its intrinsic merits as on other factors.? How else to explain
the rise of
so many languages, including many derided by academics as really bad
designs.
Some of them fall into disuse, but certainly not all.
RJF