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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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