[Axiom-developer] Re: FW: summer of code

[Ondrej Certik]

Hi, yes, I am subsribed to both axiom lists, but I was just busy. I
missed a discussion about the GSoC. I think all of us has already
expressed our opinions.

Thanks for the wishes, I also wish the Axiom project to become more
widespread and to succeed.

I think CAS is popular among students (as SAGE or SymPy shows) and
also I think that a full potential of the computer algebra systems was
not fully explited at all so far. However, it needs to be usable from
a widespread, standard, preferably highlevel language. Lisp, SPAD, or
Aldor are probably not going to be mainstream soon (and in my opinion
that is the crucial factor of attracting more people to any software),
but we had this discussion already, I know that some of you disagree,
but that's what I think about it.

I am also interested in collaboration. For example I am curious, how
the Gruntz algorithm is going to look like in Aldor. However, Aldor is
still not opensource and as I read some posts, maybe it is still not
clear if it ever will (by open source, I mean DFSG free
http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines). And if you choose
the way of improving SPAD by yourself, with Axiom the only program
that uses it (correct me if I am wrong), then in my opinion it's the
same technological mistake as Maple or Mathematica did. I understand
the points of trying to make a better language, however, I myself am
not going to do it, as I don't believe it can ever really succeed. As
I talked with some of the students applying to SymPy, they have pretty
similar opinions to mine. So the time will tell, who invested his time
better. I just want to make the point, that although we all want to
contribute in the CAS field, I came to the conclusion that I can help
the field more by contributing to SymPy rather than to Axiom.

Regards,
Ondrej

On 4/12/07, Bill Page <address@hidden> wrote:
> Axiom Developers;
>
> As motivation for further "sole searching" concerning the
> minimal interest in Axiom expressed by Summer of Code
> applicants to LispNYC (which very generously included Axiom
> in it's list of possible projects), I am forwarding the
> following email concerning SymPy. As you will read, a total
> of 5 applications were accepted for SymPy related projects!
>
> But first I would like to sincerely congratulate Ondrej Certik
> for obtaining such a large response to the SymPy project. I
> think that this is an encouraging sign that there is indeed
> still a lot of interest in computer algebra/symbolic compuation
> on the part of computer sciene students. I wish him and the
> participants in the SOC 2007 projects the the greatest success.
> I plan to continue to monitor the SymPy project and update the
> version of SymPy that is accessible on the Axiom Wiki:
>
> http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/SandBoxSymPy
>
> I don't see this as in conflict with any objectives of the
> Axiom project and in fact I hope that we can continue to
> collaborate to the greatest extent possible. Axiom developers
> can contribute just by trying examples online or by downloading
> and testing SymPy locally on their own computers and reporting
> problems as usual to the SymPy developers. I believe that
> Ondrej is subscribed to this Axiom email list, but obviously
> he may be a little too busy with details of the Sympy projects
> to contribute much to our discussion here. :-)
>
> Regards,
> Bill Page.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden
>       On Behalf Of Ondrej Certik
> Sent: April 12, 2007 5:56 AM
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: summer of code
>
> Hi all,
>
> thanks to all of you for participating in the GSoC. As I wrote, we
> got 11 applications in total and 5 were selected (congratulations
> to Mateusz, Robert, Brian, Chris and Jason!), so it's a huge success,
> I didn't expect that.
>
> You can check it here:
>
> http://code.google.com/soc/psf/about.html
> http://code.google.com/soc/stsci/about.html
> http://code.google.com/soc/psu/about.html
>
> Thanks also to Mladen, Marc-Etienne and George, even though you
> weren't selected, you still helped SymPy a lot just by applying a
> high quality application. Because that's better than any other
> advertising.
>
> The technical issues with those selected will be done later, don't
> worry about it now. I'll be in touch.
>
> Ondrej