[Chicago] Has anyone used Maple?

[Lewit, Douglas]

Hi Sheila,

It sounds like a great opportunity, but I'm an older student.  (Not as much
stamina as when I was in my 20's, unfortunately.)  Between work and school
I have very little leftover time for extra projects.  I actually teach
part-time at Oakton Community College, where I take advantage of Wolfram
Mathematica.  (That's the computer algebra system that we use at Oakton. )
 Again, it's commercial software but I really don't object to spending some
money on a company that produces a worthwhile product.  (Oh god, if only
Richard Stallman heard me say that!  He would probably beat me up severely
for spending money on copyrighted software rather than software that is
"copylefted"! )

And speaking of Stallman, I find the whole copyright vs. copyleft issue
very amusing.  I know that much of Linux, the Free Software Foundation,
Open Source, etc, grew out of some terribly unpleasant legal battles
between BSD and AT&T, but I have a really hard time respecting Stallman
after he said something like this in response to an interviewer's question,
"But Mr. Stallman, if all software is free, how will programmers make a
living?", to which Stallman coldly replied, "Who forced you to become a
programmer?"  Hmmm...... Andrew Carnegie would be very happy!  Carnegie and
his partner Frick didn't believe in paying their steelworkers much money,
and did a great job of breaking the labor unions and craft guilds in their
steel factories.  I'm a big advocate of labor laws and hence I have a
really hard time accepting any institution that forces or encourages people
to work for free hence my skepticism when it comes to the vision of Richard
Stallman and like-minded individuals.  If computer science majors are going
to borrow $100,000 to pay for their college education, how will they be
able to repay those loans if they contribute all of their work to free and
open source projects?  (Not to mention the financial necessities of
day-to-day living. )

I really got off on a tangent here!  But I do have some reservations about
this new movement of free software that is trying to undermine all
commercial software enterprises.  Why bother becoming a programmer if
nobody will pay me to program and if all my programs are copylefted and
belong to the public domain?  I think I would rather become a banker!

On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 12:22 PM, sheila miguez <shekay at pobox.com> wrote:

> Yes, I did see that you'd used SymPy. I followed up to mention that SymPy
> is a Google Summer of Code project. Since you are a student, you can apply
> to a GSoC project. If you are accepted as a GSoC student for SymPy you
> could make a proposal to improve it if that interests you.
>
> I want to make sure people in college know about GSoC.
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 11:02 AM, Lewit, Douglas <d-lewit at neiu.edu> wrote:
>
>> Hi Sheila,
>>
>> I've used Sympy.  It is impressive, but still can't compete with Maple
>> and Mathematica when it comes to serious high-level computer algebra.
>> Matlab seems to be the software of choice with most engineers, although
>> I've found that when it comes to plotting Matplotlib can do pretty much
>> whatever Matlab can do.  But in the area of computer algebra I still have
>> to cast my vote with Maple and Mathematica, but especially Maple.  (Maple
>> is also Canadian software, and Canada is one of my favorite countries!  I
>> don't mind spending some money on top quality commercial software that
>> comes out of Canada.)
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 10:22 AM, sheila miguez <shekay at pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 3:22 PM, Lewit, Douglas <d-lewit at neiu.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> computer algebra power surpasses the power of Python's Sympy
>>>
>>>
>>> Speaking of which, SymPy is a Google Summer of Code project.
>>>
>>> https://github.com/numfocus/gsoc#organizations-confirmed-under-numfocus-umbrella
>>>
>>> Registration for GSoC starts tomorrow.
>>> https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2015
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> shekay at pobox.com
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Chicago mailing list
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>>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago
>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> shekay at pobox.com
>
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>
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