Re: [Axiom-developer] A student comment

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

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Bill Page wrote:
> For a better user interface experience I would recommend using Axiom
> within Sage. Sage provides a browser-based notebook interface that
> should be familiar to most students these days. And for cryptography I
> think Sage's common interface to other packages like singular and gap
> might also be of interest. It is very easy to install the Axiom
> package for Sage on both Linux and Mac, though Windows is a more
> difficult problem - usually solved by running Linux in a virtual
> machine under Windows.
> 
>> Just thought you'd like to know.
>>
> 
> Thanks. I would like to know more. But apparently some people here
> really do not care to know. :-( The suggestion to turn these comments
> back on the student surely can not be of much use since it seems
> rather unlikely to me that cryptography students will be motivated to
> solve these sort problems with the Axiom user interface when there are
> so many other alternatives available.

Well ... I don't know a heck of a lot about cryptography, but I do know
that it's computationally intensive and a student is indeed probably
better off using something more optimized, such as Singular, Gap,
GiNaC/CLN, or Sage than a "general purpose math package like Axiom." The
kinds of things *I* do in Axiom, on the other hand, *are* things where a
pleasant, easy to use interface is vital. I don't do anything bizarre or
demanding; nearly everything I do could be done on an HP or TI high-end
symbolic calculator if it had the speed and the memory. It can certainly
be done in Axiom or Maxima or Yacas (or Derive) -- about the only
requirement I have beyond the basics is Laplace transforms.

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