8 ms·

But Maxima, which is horrifying buggy.

sourcepluck 2y ago
Hmm, I was using it fairly heavily while going through a book which required loads of messing with graphs last year for a month maybe and I don't remember it acting up... Perhaps I got lucky? Is it known to be buggy, in general?
- ethernot 2y ago
  Yes it's terribly buggy. Incorrect answers sometimes depending on release versions and solve gets stuck all the time. I tend to use Xcas/GIAC instead where I can. Also bundled on my calculator (HP Prime). It's so bad that the university I "loosely associate" with have their own patched version to fix a load of problems with it.
  - sourcepluck 2y ago
    Hmm ok, shoot. I hope someone comes and cleans it up with one day, a historically significant piece of software, I would say.
    - ethernot 2y ago
      Indeed. The problem is that there is no regression suite clearly. Sometimes things get broken and then have to be fixed again. You end up in situation where you need to tell a person to use a specific version and hope they know how to get it working. This makes communication, which is a really big part of mathematics, extremely difficult.
anthk 2y ago
WxMaxima? For sure. Plain Maxima/XMaxima/Maxima.el it's megastable.
- ethernot 2y ago
  Stable yes. Buggy yes. There are all sorts of problems it gets stuck on. solve() is terrible.
  - anthk 2y ago
    Which Common Lisp interpreter/compiler did you use?
    - ethernot 2y ago
      SBCL shipped via homebrew. SBCL is fine. It's Maxima that is full of bugs.
      - ethernot 2y ago
        I love how I get downvoted for every negative comment about this rather than an actual rebuttal of the issues. It's fucking shit. I hate every moment using Maxima. I'd rather pay for Mathematica but my org is too cheap for that. There you. Enjoy :) Even better, I'd rather do it by hand!
        anthk 2y ago
        Fricas it's another CAS based on Common Lisp. BTW, the current SBCL versions are much better than the stable/oldstable releases such as the ones for Debian or Ubuntu LTS. Try Fricas, you might like it too. On Maxima, beware, because your package manager might ship you a Maxima version built with generic and unnoptimized CL compilers. GNU CLisp's performance against SBCL it's abysmal. On an n270 netbook, MCClim widgets built from Ultralisp (QuickLisp repo) run in realtime with SBCL. ECL it's a bit beter, closer to SBCL than CLISP. CLISP fails to compile due the lack of threading support on 32 bit. And even if it ran MCClim, it would run visibily redrawing widgets like Win32 ones under a Pentium as they did back in the day.
        ethernot 2y ago

Hmm, I was using it fairly heavily while going through a book which required loads of messing with graphs last year for a month maybe and I don't remember it acting up... Perhaps I got lucky? Is it known to be buggy, in general?

ethernot 2y ago
Yes it's terribly buggy. Incorrect answers sometimes depending on release versions and solve gets stuck all the time. I tend to use Xcas/GIAC instead where I can. Also bundled on my calculator (HP Prime). It's so bad that the university I "loosely associate" with have their own patched version to fix a load of problems with it.
- sourcepluck 2y ago
  Hmm ok, shoot. I hope someone comes and cleans it up with one day, a historically significant piece of software, I would say.
  - ethernot 2y ago
    Indeed. The problem is that there is no regression suite clearly. Sometimes things get broken and then have to be fixed again. You end up in situation where you need to tell a person to use a specific version and hope they know how to get it working. This makes communication, which is a really big part of mathematics, extremely difficult.

anthk 2y ago

WxMaxima? For sure. Plain Maxima/XMaxima/Maxima.el it's megastable.

ethernot 2y ago
Stable yes. Buggy yes. There are all sorts of problems it gets stuck on. solve() is terrible.
- anthk 2y ago
  Which Common Lisp interpreter/compiler did you use?
  - ethernot 2y ago
    SBCL shipped via homebrew. SBCL is fine. It's Maxima that is full of bugs.
    - ethernot 2y ago
      I love how I get downvoted for every negative comment about this rather than an actual rebuttal of the issues. It's fucking shit. I hate every moment using Maxima. I'd rather pay for Mathematica but my org is too cheap for that. There you. Enjoy :) Even better, I'd rather do it by hand!
      - anthk 2y ago
        Fricas it's another CAS based on Common Lisp. BTW, the current SBCL versions are much better than the stable/oldstable releases such as the ones for Debian or Ubuntu LTS. Try Fricas, you might like it too. On Maxima, beware, because your package manager might ship you a Maxima version built with generic and unnoptimized CL compilers. GNU CLisp's performance against SBCL it's abysmal. On an n270 netbook, MCClim widgets built from Ultralisp (QuickLisp repo) run in realtime with SBCL. ECL it's a bit beter, closer to SBCL than CLISP. CLISP fails to compile due the lack of threading support on 32 bit. And even if it ran MCClim, it would run visibily redrawing widgets like Win32 ones under a Pentium as they did back in the day.
        ethernot 2y ago