Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: OpenAxiom-1.2.1 released

[root]

> I'm not going to do any work, that is rejected before planning stage.
> It is a mere waste of time, I'm not going to live forever or wait forever,
> even 5 years is too much.

...[snip]...

Axiom is a long term project. The theme is the 30 year horizon.  The
point is to make the code live despite the fact that the authors are
dead.  Just two weeks ago we lost yet another Axiom contributor.

A great deal of thought went into the design decisions and project goals.  
All of those thoughts have been documented many times in this forum.





> While I agree with some points, other points are simply asking for nightmare.
> Autoconf may be bad, but what is there now is even worse. And what is going
> to be is hardly any better.

...[snip]...

What is there now is being simplified with each iteration.
A large number of Makefiles are gone. Whole subdirectories are gone.
The whole Makefile superstructure will disappear.
Code is being re-structured, refactored, and documented.
End user documentation is improving with each release.





Exactly the points you raise are the reason FriCAS exists.
FriCAS developers removed the literate form of files in many cases.
FriCAS developers use autoconf and traditional code handling.
FriCAS developers "want it now", not 30 years from now.

If you REALLY want it now, I suggest you switch to Sage.
Sage is moving very fast, builds everywhere with a single "make",
(although not autoconf), has a huge number of active authors,
and is released every week or so. They don't want lisp at all.
But they bundle everything under the sun.




I applaud your desire to use a computer algebra system.
However, the project goals of Axiom clearly don't meet your needs.

Tim




<begin indignation rant>

P.S. As for that "piece of shit" GCL.... GCL was developed under
contract to IBM specifically for Axiom. I'm one of its (minor)
authors.  Bill Schelter, the author, was one of the finest programmers
I've known.  His death in 2000 is what caused me to call NAG about
Axiom.  What body of work have you personally authored that so
outshines GCL that you feel qualified to disparage Bill's work? What
body of patches have you submitted to GCL that improves it?  His code
is still used 9 years after his death and generates more efficient
code for Axiom than any other lisp distribution.

Bill sat at my office desk when he visited IBM to work. I once saw him
complain about something Emacs did that was failing. He stopped work,
downloaded the Emacs sources, found the problem, rebuilt Emacs, tested
it, posted a patch, and went back to the GCL task. He has patches in
Emacs, written, tested, and posted in the late 80s. He did open source
work before anyone knew what it was, quietly, efficiently, and correctly.

Bill is unable to defend himself against your remarks but I am.

You seem to be stopped by trivial build problems. 
You refuse to consider posting even minor patches. 
You feel qualified to disparage work you don't personally understand.  
You feel that wasting your time to help other people is a bad tradeoff. 
You feel that the project goals should be redefined to suit your opinions. 
You have no sense of vision beyond your own wants and needs. 
Frankly, I'm not as impressed with you as you seem to be with yourself.

Be that as it may, the Axiom mailing list is NOT the place to lightly
disparage Bill's work. He was a great programmer and I feel a need to
defend his reputation.

<end indignation rant>