Re: Mathematica 7.0.1.0 and some General Comments
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg97189] Re: Mathematica 7.0.1.0 and some General Comments
- From: ADL <alberto.dilullo at tiscali.it>
- Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 02:41:19 -0500 (EST)
- References: <goqphr$lt2$1@smc.vnet.net>
With respect to some of your points, I really believe that the worst thing WRI developers could do against Mathematica itself was (and is) to hide the bug list and the list of fixes. This overall gives the feeling of a substantially unreliable system. Generally speaking, I am fond of the basic Mathematica structure, I use it every day to solve practical issues in my job and also develop some rather complex programs, but admittedly would never fully rely on a piece of software in which new bugs are introduced all the time, also in appearently consolidated areas, and for which fixes are never documented and established once for all. On the contrary, WRI has undertaken the introduction of thousands new features, many of which do not appear to work exactly as expected, are ofted superficially documented, are difficult to print and study in detail and are sometines stubbornly affected by some "suboptimal" design, which makes their application counterintuitive or error prone. Most Mathematica books are full of astonishing one-liners (perhaps 1000 characters long), while a lot of people are still stuck with FindRoot, Eigenvectors, FourierTransform, etc etc. To make a simple plot, it is often better (sometimes recommended) to quit Mathematica and use a general-purpose spreadsheet. It is surely a strategy, it might support some cash flow, but I do not believe it is a winning strategy. About one / two years ago, WRI proudly declared that they had reached the millionth build of Mathematica. Now, there are surely many more. Why they did not realize that this very bad advertisement for a sw with 6 official versions (at that time) and strong indication of a very bad design? This is an explicit declaration that Mathematica is not amenable to incremental development, that is the only way towards reliability. I do not understand why and I am sad about it, but after reading this Group for about one year and having used Mathematica since version 3, to me WRI appears to be strongly determined NOT to become a winner in this arena. ADL On 6 Mar, 10:14, "David Park" <djmp... at comcast.net> wrote: ... > > David Park > > djmp... at comcast.net > > <http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark>http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/
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