In the form it stated in Wikipedia, it sounds as if Gaston Gonnet said that Maple lost market share due to the interface, and now, with new interface, it got (or is going to get) the share back. I don't think that he meant that.

Unfortunately, what I think about the reasons of losing market share, is unpublishable (and nobody cares anyway :).

Alec

?RandomTools,flavor,float says that the default method in your example is logarithmic. If you want uniform distribution, then method=uniform should be added to the Generate command.

Alec

?RandomTools,flavor,float says that the default method in your example is logarithmic. If you want uniform distribution, then method=uniform should be added to the Generate command.

Alec

Yes, currently Maplesoft IP address mentioned above, is blacklisted, for the reasons described above and below.

Note that it was not a single Internet vandalism event. There were a series of such events originated from that IP address, repeated after several warnings.

If there are reasons for unblocking it (such as an evidence of some internal measures  preventing future Internet vandalism from that IP address), I'd like to know about them.

Alec

Edit: Today I found out that some of the changes on the Wikipedia page were restored, without apparent edit wars, That seems like a good reason to unblock the mentioned IP address. Certainly, all Maplesoft employees, as well as not Maplesoft employees, are very welcome to post and to edit other posts in Maple wiki. -Alec

Alejandro,

I like the page reference!

Otherwise, like in Wikipedia article about Maple, at the end of the History section, the phrase

Between the mid 1995 and 2005 Maple lost significant market share to competitors due to a weaker user interface

is attributed to Gaston Gonnet, with a link to the interview, but without the page number. I doubt that he said that, but the interview is long, and without the page reference is hard to tell whether he said that, or not.

Alec

PS By the way, I just noticed some positive changes there which may be a good reason to  remove Maplesoft from the Black List in Maple wiki? -Alec

Alejandro,

I like the page reference!

Otherwise, like in Wikipedia article about Maple, at the end of the History section, the phrase

Between the mid 1995 and 2005 Maple lost significant market share to competitors due to a weaker user interface

is attributed to Gaston Gonnet, with a link to the interview, but without the page number. I doubt that he said that, but the interview is long, and without the page reference is hard to tell whether he said that, or not.

Alec

PS By the way, I just noticed some positive changes there which may be a good reason to  remove Maplesoft from the Black List in Maple wiki? -Alec

This topic arose from 2 sources.

First - recent Dave Linder's blog in the comments to which this phrase was used to say that the value 0 given by Maple may be OK, because it doesn't mean anything anyway since the help page says that at singularity the limit should be used instead.

Second - recent Student's forum topic about removable singularities.

Alec

Acer,

I agree that making sources available is geeky-cool (using Jacques term). I also like that feature. Making them available in the commented and documented form would certainly make them more usable, and helped with bug fixing and new algorithms developing. That was an old wish of many so-called Maple experts 8-10 years ago, and only very few of them can be seen on this site or elsewhere now.

I actually didn't mean that talking about cool. I meant features attracting to the young generation.

Alec

Acer,

I agree that making sources available is geeky-cool (using Jacques term). I also like that feature. Making them available in the commented and documented form would certainly make them more usable, and helped with bug fixing and new algorithms developing. That was an old wish of many so-called Maple experts 8-10 years ago, and only very few of them can be seen on this site or elsewhere now.

I actually didn't mean that talking about cool. I meant features attracting to the young generation.

Alec

The terminology used in Maple, and how far it is from terminology used in Mathematics, is a different topic, I think. Certainly, it is very-very far.

However, I don't see how domains related to this particular case.

According to singular, 0 is not a singularity for the piecewise function in my original example,

singular(f);

but then it is not clear what a singularity means in Maple.

As I mentioned above, the theoretical aspect of that is not that important to me, and maybe in some newly developed kind of science the value of an expression at a singularity being equal to the limit of this expression at that singularity (whatever that could mean) has some sense. It just doesn't have sense in Calculus context and in the context of using Maple for teaching Calculus.

Alec

What else the evaluation at a point can mean? Or a limit of an expression?

Alec

From practical point of view, there is no much difference with Maple in that aspect. While Maple library sources are available, and it may seem more cool, but...

1. These sources are uncommented and undocumented.

2. Kernel and UIs sources are not available.

3. The dlls used for external calling come not only without sources and documentation, but also without headers and libs.

... which is also not that cool.

Alec

From practical point of view, there is no much difference with Maple in that aspect. While Maple library sources are available, and it may seem more cool, but...

1. These sources are uncommented and undocumented.

2. Kernel and UIs sources are not available.

3. The dlls used for external calling come not only without sources and documentation, but also without headers and libs.

... which is also not that cool.

Alec

Checked the ?Dictionary,singularity:

Singularity,n. 1. (Complex analysis) a point at which a function is not differentiable although it is differentiable at points in any neighborhood of that point; such a point may, however, be a removable singularity. See also pole, isolated singularity, Picard's theorems. 2. a discontinuity that is not removable. 3. another term for singular point (sense 1). See also singular.

So, the 1st and 3rd meanings, the same as I mentioned above, don't seem to have any sense in the eval context. The second meaning is discontinuity, in which case it also doesn't have sense.

Alec

Actually, I think that Wolfram Mathematica is cool.

For example,

KnotData[{6,2}]

Isn't that cool?

Alec