[Maxima] Features; general comments... a couple suggestions..

[Robert Dodier]

Steve, thanks for your message. I'm glad to hear from you.

On 1/5/09, shorne at energetiq.com <shorne at energetiq.com> wrote:

> What Maxima brings to the table is explicitly _not_ numerical capabilities.

With all due respect, I think you're mistaken. Combining symbolic
and numerical functions makes Maxima much more powerful than
either capability alone.

> However, the development model for Maxima  -- a sort of free-for-all
> -- is actually quite productive.

Seems to work OK in practice ... and in any event, there is nobody
here in a position to give orders.

> I claim an interesting project, for someone who has a solid
> architectural knowledge of Maxima, would be a similar build system
> -- a scheme that would  permit customization and optimization for
> various levels of features, performance, memory footprint,
> and disk footprint.

I think that's a great idea. I hope someone will work on it.

> Something to get started with --
> an incomplete and (I believe) buggy version....
> I've hacked at this ovre the years, with little success..

Seems like an interesting problem -- code to solve it could be
generally useful. Keep us posted as you progress. Maybe someone
will be inspired to work on it too.

best

Robert Dodier