Open Source Computer Algebra Systems

timdaly writes "A while back Slashdot had an article decrying the lack of a good open source computer algebra system. That is changing. There is a conference scheduled for the end of May to define the development model and strategy for future work. Students of math, science and engineering will find this valuable. If you're tired of hacking open source editors and want something with a real technical challenge this is the area for you."

Comments

Bad Idea

[cperciva]

A computer algebra system which is built in a bazaar is a Bad Idea.

With an operating system, it isn't all that critical if it crashes occasionally. Ok, it's a nuisance... but it won't go unnoticed, and someone will track down why it's crashing, and it will get fixed.

Computer algebra systems are rather more prone to undiscovered errors. It's very easy, for example, to write a long integer multiplication routine which works perfectly for integers less than 2^20 digits long, but starts to fail (deterministically, but without obvious pattern) for very rare inputs above that size. In a bazaar, where code is accepted from anyone, you're very likely to see this sort of buggy code get introduced.

With a closed (commercial) or pseudo-closed (not necessarily commercial, but within a university where everyone has scrutinized each other's credentials) environment, such errors are far less likely to exist. Computational mathematicians are paranoid about such errors; computational mathematicians will not introduce a piece of code unless they can *prove* that it will work.

Given enough eyes, all detected bugs will be fixed; but actually detecting those bugs in the first place is far from certain.

Re:Bad Idea

[swillden]

Computer algebra systems are rather more prone to undiscovered errors. [...] In a bazaar, where code is accepted from anyone, you're very likely to see this sort of buggy code get introduced.

With a closed (commercial) or pseudo-closed (not necessarily commercial, but within a university where everyone has scrutinized each other's credentials) environment, such errors are far less likely to exist. [...] computational mathematicians will not introduce a piece of code unless they can *prove* that it will work.

Given enough eyes, all detected bugs will be fixed; but actually detecting those bugs in the first place is far from certain.

No offense, but you don't understand the open source process. I know of no open source project anywhere in which "code is accepted from anyone". Patches can be offered by anyone, but there are gatekeepers that decide what is and is not allowed into the source tree. For a project like this, I would expect the gatekeepers to be computational mathematicians and I would expect that they would reject out of hand any non-trivial submission that isn't accompanied by a formal proof of correctness.

Further, it wouldn't surprise me if *this* project used some extensive and formal peer review process, so that before (or maybe after) the gatekeeper accepts a submission there's oversight from a group of other mathematicians.

I think open source is *perfect* for this sort of application. It's certainly much more likely to produce correct code than a closed source shop where only a small number of people can review the code and there are marketing people trying to push the product out the door.

Re:Development model

[joto]

Well let's hope otherwise. There already exists several good open source systems for various sub-fields, but we also need an uber-system that does everything (albeit not necessarily as good as the specialized systems), but is friendly enough to be used by people who could never write it themselves (i.e: mathematica, maple, derive, mathcad, etc).

Today we have muPAD (generally the smartest, pretty friendly, but only somewhat free), maxima (which is usable, but hardly polished), yacas (which I know nothing about), and emacs calc (which is very user-friendly but also the dumbest). None of them (well, maybe muPAD) are close to becoming rivals to the above-mentioned systems in terms of either user-friendlyness or features.

(Of course, this is not special for computer algebra systems. We also need better DMBS (and related tools, such as form-generators, report-generators, etc...), office productivity apps, cad, gis, groupware, financial stuff, graphics, dtp, music, etc...)