Re: [Reduce-algebra-developers] A new Reduce primer

[René G. <dos...@gm...>]

Thanks Arthur and your co-author for the new primer and also for the
reference to the paper in the AMS Notices of November (not yet in my mail
box).

As an addict to CAS's for at least 40 years --- and as a (retired) plasma
theorist in a team of Solar radioastronomy with a first degree in
engineering --- my comment is that it would be rather foolish to trust any
electronic device (full of "gremlins") and its associated software control
or the software running on it (full of "bugs").

However one cannot trust anymore hand or purely mental computations! In the
latter case unless you are Steve Hawking of course.

It would be strange that trustworthy results would be expected in computing
without the multiple checking with different teams, methods and equipment
which applies in all scientific domains. More than one referee is expected
to check the proofs of theorems presented for publication in pure
mathematics.

Now my past experience with the commercial Macsyma was equally negative as
reported in the paper about another commercial CAS. I found however with
maxima and reduce and indeed any other free software of very high quality
--- the quality control is soon made by an army of eager users if the item
is of enough interest! --- all the help one can hope within reason.

Reasonable expectations however apply to both free and commercial software.
A few users simply expect the impossible and more often than not without
doing first their own homework ... they are not just cheating students
either!

Many thanks again to the people who prepared the primers and keep improving
the manual.

René.







On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 3:56 AM, Arthur Norman <ac...@ca...> wrote:

> In trunl/doc/primers/insidereduce.pdf you will find a new document by
> Raffaele Vitolo and myself that can stand alongside the existing Herbert
> Melenk primer.pdf as a source of information for people wishing to build
> their own Reduce packages or even just for people who wiah to understand a
> little more about the internals of the system. For instance those who feel
> that it is important to be able to understand all the source code and all
> the algorithms used by software you rely on (see for instance
> www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1249.pdf) may or may not find Reduce
> able to solve their particular problem and may or may not uncover bugs in
> it - but they can inspect all the code and if necessary correct or extend
> it. The existing and new primer might help them in their navigation!
>
> These two documents (plus a copy of the Standard Lisp Report) have bene
> put in a new "primers" directory in the hope that others will contribute
> further documents explaining either the use of Reduce or aspects of its
> internal structure. The authors of Inside Reduce would be very happy to
> consider merging in chapters to that contributed by others ifthat felt
> more confortable than having a free standing separate document. I might
> also hope that this message will inspire some people to open up a
> discussion about what extra explanation would be useful. There can then be
> a secondary discussion of what is feasible and who will do the work!
>
> Arthur
>
>
>
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