Re: [dev] a suckless computer algebra system

2009/11/24 Preben Randhol <randhol_AT_pvv.org>:
> On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:39:04 +0000
> Anselm R Garbe <anselm_AT_garbe.us> wrote:
>
>> Why not? I think it should be possible to have very minimalist and
>> specialized CAS', they managed to do that in the 50s and 60s, why not
>> today?
>
> We are not living in the 50's nor 60's... If the suckless approach is to

Mankind was able to visit the moon based on these very simple systems
at the end of that era, but hasn't ever been since (the modern excuse
is lack of money, but I disagree). I don't think that they did
everything wrong in the past or that most of the past technology has
no value to learn from.

> because the source code gets bigger or more complex, then IMHO
> suckless approach is not the correct approach for CAS.
>
> CAS is used to solve a multitude of problems that
> you cannot define into a narrow problem space.
>
> Of course you can make x applications that each solve a spesific
> mathematical problem, but what a mess it creates when you have to
> combine applications. I have work with such systems and the time wasted
> in transfering data from one to the other is a big problem. Not to say
> the errors this can introduce...

I never said that a suckless CAS' main objective would be LOC. But I'd
say that a suckless CAS would create one program for each specific
mathematical problem and define a uniform interface to combine these
programs using pipes to solve a complex problem. This also has the
advantage that one can easily distribute and scale each of these
programs onto separate cpus or even servers and hence increase the
overall performance. I would say that Go sounds like an interesting
language to start such a project.

Cheers,
Anselm
Received on Wed Nov 25 2009 - 08:22:47 UTC