Re: New version, new bugs
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg42631] Re: New version, new bugs
- From: Bill Rowe <listuser at earthlink.net>
- Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 05:25:28 -0400 (EDT)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
On 7/17/03 at 3:45 AM, ErsekTR at navair.navy.mil (Ersek, Ted R) wrote: > In response to some reported bugs Andrzej Kozlowski wrote: > I agree that the other bugs you mention are awful and ought to have been > fixed long ago. Some of them at least seem pretty trivial to fix and it > seems that the only reason why they haven't been fixed is that they were > never recorded on a "to be done" list. I feel that something is seriously > amiss when a reported bug that does not require a major re-write of the > kernel is not fixed: at least the person who reported it ought to be given > an explanation why it has not been done. It looks to me that Wolfram's > entire bug-reporting system needs a serious reconsideration. While I can understand your fustration, you have assumed quite a bit in your remarks that may not be true. A bug that might look trivial to you to fix may in fact be far from trivial. And even if a very specific bug is trivial to fix, fixing it might introduce other problems with code that depends on the code being altered. I suspect for any code change to the kernel Wolfram has to go through a fairly extensive suite of testing to ensure they have not introduced new problems. I suspect this makes even the most trivial bugs not as trivial as you might think. > The Wolfram Research process for testing and fixing bugs is badly broken at > Wolfram Research. For more evidence of this consider the following. The > Mathematica Book (4th edition) section 3.1.4 gives the following on page > 722. > In[11]:=N[Pi,20] > Out[11]= 3.1415926535897932385 > In[12]:=InputForm[%] > Out[12]//InputForm = 3.141592653589793238462643383279503`20 > In[13]:= InputForm[%,NumberMarks->False] > Out[13]//InputForm = 3.1415926535897932385 > I am using Mathematica 4.1 under Windows 98, and I get > Out[13]//InputForm = > InputForm[3.141592653589793238462643383279503`20, NumberMarks -> False] > from the last line above. With version 5.0 this appears to have been corrected. At least running version 5.0 on MacOS 10.2.6 I get the following results: In[3]:= N[Pi,20] Out[3]= 3.1415926535897932385 In[4]:= InputForm[%] Out[4]//InputForm= 3.14159265358979323846264338358737222874`20. In[5]:= InputForm[%,NumberMarks\[Rule]False] Out[5]//InputForm= 3.1415926535897932385