Maple V Release 1 Demo says Copyright (c) 1981-...

Does that mean that the development started in 1981, or there was a release in 1981?

Alec

PS I started using it from 1996 and everything that was before that is a complete mistery... -Alec

PPS It is interesting that year 2006 was skipped. Wasn't Maple 10.02 released then, or there were no releases at all? -Alec

That's, certainly, a good idea too.

I think, I have Maple versions from 6 to 10 though. Personally, I would be more interested in earlier Maple versions - for collection purposes. I remember how I got excited 3 years ago when Tom Lee posted Maple V Release 1 demo in his blog . It seems to be not available there anymore.

Alec

PS Is it really that hard to make Maple Express? I thought that it could use the same kernel and the same Classic Interface (with, maybe, graying out functions in the context menu that are not available, or displaying a message that it is available only in the complete version), and the libraries were built in chronological order, I think, so earlier libraries shouldn't have many references to later libraries. One can write a simple script indexing all the functions and their references. Are there some other things that should be done? -Alec

I spent some time today reading last year posts that I missed and found out that the situation is not that bad as I thought. Many Maplesoft people posted some interesting and useful material. Dave Linder, for instance. Besides, Joe Riel works at Maplesoft - I just considered him being "Maple expert" rather than Maplesoft representative.

Alec

I posted about that in 2006, and I didn't get a reply to that either (but got a reply to the first post in the thread.)

Alec

Forbidden? I didn't think about that. That would explain it.

Actually, I wondered about that a long time ago - when I posted in the Maple newsgroup regularly, together with a series of other people, some of whom are active on this site, too. None of us worked at Maplesoft (at that time). And I tried to understand - why in the Mathematica newsgroup the most active posters were people working in Wolfram Research while posts from people working at Maplesoft in the Maple newsgroup were a big rarity.

At that time, I thought that the difference was that Mathematica newsgroup was moderated - that made discussions more civilized. But now - this site is moderated, so that shouldn't be a difference. The lack of interest was the only one explanation that I could find. But if it's forbidden - that's different. That would explain it.

Alec

Another difference between these forums and MSDN forums is that Microsoft developers actively participate practically in every thread. The moderators are project leads and program leads and they are the most active participants.

Usually a thread develops as follows. Somebody posts a bug or a question related to some product. Almost immediately you see a response either from a developer who wrote it, or from a moderator (who supervised it). Then few more users either confirm bug or not, or suggest a workaround if it wasn't suggested by the developer or the moderator. And if it was really a bug, next day, or in 3 or 4 days, a patch is posted correcting it.

The situation here is completely different. It looks as if Maplesoft developers are not especially interested in discussions related to their work (with notable exception of Dr. Paulina Chin.)

Alec

Amazing, simply amazing!

That reminds me of good olden days.

I wonder what would Carl suggest.

Alec

Amazing, simply amazing!

That reminds me of good olden days.

I wonder what would Carl suggest.

Alec

I still hope that it will be Maple 2009 and not Maple 13.

Alec

Axel,

For some functions SAGE uses Pari, as well as a series of other systems, GAP, Singular, Maxima etc.

number_of_partitions, however, is a pure SAGE function. Currently, it seems to be the best in the field. It beats Pari, and it beats Mathematica improving the speed in several times, not talking about Maple, which seems to be not able to calculate such things as numbpart(10^9) at all, either correctly or wrong.

Alec

Another way of writing the numbpart (and many others) command would be using system command (or ssystem?) and SAGE - that would be both fast and correct. The only problem with that is that SAGE is GPLed, so it can't be distributed with Maple. The call to it still might be legal - IANAL.

Alec

I didn't see the procedure's code. Could it be possible refined for using Compiler:-Compile? The C procedure should be much faster and allow testing for larger values of n. 

Using pentagonal recurrences (for calculating the partition function modulo some number, say 2^32 - in this case the modulus need not to be included - the usual addition would do that automatically in case of overflowing) can be written rather simple in the way that Compiler:-Compile can be used. I'm not sure how far it can go, but probably further than current numbpart, so that could be used for testing, too.

Alec

Such procedures, obviously, should be exhaustively tested for all values of n up to the values for which it is possible. And values in this sequence seems to be in the available range (unless the timing is even worse than I expected.)

The absence of such testing makes other similar functions suspicious, too.

Also, it seems as if the exit condition should be not constant, but depending on n, and values of it could be guessed using series of random values of n in various intervals, with exhaustive testing after that.

Another thing seems clear - either the procedure was not reviewed before including it in the released product, or the reviewers did not qualify to do the review.

I wouldn't blame the person who wrote the code - such things usually happen, but the procedure including testing and review should exist to prevent them.

Alec

Programmatic needs - that is different. I meant the usual Maple use. By the way, it is interesting if Compiler:-Compile, or Array give faster array filling than seq, or not (for programmatic needs).

One thing that people don't usually think about comparing timings, is that in real life the "inventing a procedure" and typing it also should be counted, especially for procedures that are used only once or twice. In this case $ has clear advantage - not only because it is shorter, but also because it doesn't include parentheses, so the expression has less parentheses and less probable to make an error of not closing them.

Another example - from my Simulation of Brownian Motion blog. The original procedure took me only few minutes to write, and produced nice plots. The later developed procedures were much faster, but took longer time to develop them and to test, and gave the same (or less quality) plots that I already had. So comparing them, even if the calculation time for new procedures was much faster, the total time, including "inventing the procedure" and writing it, was much faster for my original procedure, and in this sense, it was better.

Alec

Programmatic needs - that is different. I meant the usual Maple use. By the way, it is interesting if Compiler:-Compile, or Array give faster array filling than seq, or not (for programmatic needs).

One thing that people don't usually think about comparing timings, is that in real life the "inventing a procedure" and typing it also should be counted, especially for procedures that are used only once or twice. In this case $ has clear advantage - not only because it is shorter, but also because it doesn't include parentheses, so the expression has less parentheses and less probable to make an error of not closing them.

Another example - from my Simulation of Brownian Motion blog. The original procedure took me only few minutes to write, and produced nice plots. The later developed procedures were much faster, but took longer time to develop them and to test, and gave the same (or less quality) plots that I already had. So comparing them, even if the calculation time for new procedures was much faster, the total time, including "inventing the procedure" and writing it, was much faster for my original procedure, and in this sense, it was better.

Alec