Re: [Maxima-discuss] How can I call Maxima functions from a language different from Common Lisp? (FFI or server/client, doesn't matter)

[Wolfgang D. <wol...@da...>]

On 2016-08-30 20:20, Richard wrote:
> On 8/30/16 11:07 AM, Wolfgang Dautermann wrote:
>> It's the other way round: Maxima is the *client*, not the server.
> That's the way people think because they wrote the other program and 
> they want it to be in charge.

No, it's just a networking thing.
The *server* is the program, that starts first and listens *actively* on
a port for clients who may connect. And probably use multithreading or
multiple processes to handle connections from different client at the
same time, ...

Maxima does (currently) have no 'server'-infrastructure, but the
possibility to connect as a client to a TCP/IP port on the same machine
and get the input from there.

> That doesn't mean it should be that way. Here's why:
> 
> Maxima sets up a large infrastructure for memory management,
> symbolic computation, and perhaps other libraries for numerical,
> statistical, etc work.
> 
> Say you have your own program P that (for example) tests students on 
> algebra problems. And say your program is 1/100 the size of Maxima.

Size does not matter, often the client is much larger than the server.
Compare the size of the Apache web*server* binary
with the Firefox browser (a HTTP *client*):
du -sh /usr/sbin/apache2 /usr/lib/firefox
632K    /usr/sbin/apache2
107M    /usr/lib/firefox

(/usr/bin/firefox is a shellscript which calls the binary /usr/lib/firefox)

Best regards, Wolfgang