Re: Another computer algebra system : smib

Richard Fateman wrote:
Dave wrote:
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I would say to the original poster, the best way to make your code more robust is to test it on other systems.

I think that this notion of "robust" is questionable. Making a program run very very well on a common configuration of hardware and software strikes me as far more valuable than trying to water it down so it runs on many different hardware and software configurations.

The failures of code in one or more of the multiple Sage environments merely illustrates how poorly the notion of "machine independence" is supported by the C specification, current C compilers, and whatever else you need. (Does Python break this way too?)

I suspect that most of the bugs you find in these porting efforts have nothing to do with computer algebra system algorithms or the libraries that other people have written; fixing the bugs is, I suspect, a distraction from the building of a good system on one platform. And certainly not much of a "learning experience" unless your idea is that learning computer algebra has to do with fiddling with optimization settings on C compilers.

Not necessarily so. Older compilers often accept significant errors that trigger errors on newer compilers. Switching from one CPU architecture to another often exposes uninitialized memory, latent race conditions, etc.

Just today, such a port (by me of another company's system) exposed a few functions being called with the default C prototype (headers not included) and a couple enumerated variables being filled with values from a different enumeration.

There are times when porting causes me to groan (usually to an ancient solaris box); but its generally not too hard, and the code often benefits from the added attention.

- Daniel
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