Re: Octave and Maxima (was: (newbie) fractional arithmetic)

[John W. Eaton]

On 11-Feb-2001, Kevin Straight <address@hidden> wrote:

| Macxsyma/Maxima and Octave have totally different design goals.

Yes, probably.

| Octave is
| made to quickly deal with large matrices.  Maxima is for symbolic
| manipulation.  In the decade (give or take) since they both came out, they
| have acquired a bit of feature overlap, but you're still better off
| choosing the right tool for the job.  Maxima will *never* be as fast at
| numeric problems as Octave, and Octave will never be as flexible at
| symbolics as Maxima.

Never is a long time.

I do agree that it would be quite difficult at this point to make
Octave capable of symbolic math in a seamless way, but I don't know
why it should be impossible for maxima to be reasonably fast at
numerical problems.

| And then, all else being equal, Octave is written in C++ by someone who
| thinks in C++,

I really don't think that I think in C++.

| Maxima is written in Lisp by people who think in Lisp,

Why do you think that the choice of implementation language means that
the person who chose it thinks in it?

| so
| obviously if you prefer C++ you will have a shorter learning curve with
| Octave.

Perhaps.  Or not, depending on lots of factors, I'm sure.

| That being said, I think it is a nice feature to be able to call functions
| written in one language from another.

Sure.  But there are probably better ways than just sending data down
a pipe in plain text.

jwe



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