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A comment on A new release for GNU Octave. Parent comment

Re:A new release for GNU Octave by mkl on Sunday January 03, 2021 @08:02AM (#25621524)
Because the vast majority of Python programs aren't doing symbolic maths with Sympy. It's not a hack, and it's pretty trivial. I type "a," and press up, and run the line from my command history with all the letters in it. Sympy also has a submodule named abc you can import variables from, but I like defining them as real number variables so I don't get complex answers when they don't make sense.

Sympy is just a Python library, and one of the types it defines is symbolic maths variables, so you define Python variables just like with any other library, and then use them.

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Re:A new release for GNU Octave by enriquto on Sunday January 03, 2021 @08:29AM (#25621648)
> Because the vast majority of Python programs aren't doing symbolic maths with Sympy.

And this, my friends, is why mathematicians will never feel at home using Python+libraries. Instead of having a programming environment ideally suited to the needs of math, you need to fit your math to the Procrustean bed of Python syntax.

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Re:A new release for GNU Octave by abdullahkhalids on Sunday January 03, 2021 @11:13AM (#25622583)
That is what I wanted to say. The Python scientific ecosystem seems like it is written by programmers for scientists, while Matlab/Mathematica seem like they are written by scientists for scientists.
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Re:A new release for GNU Octave by tomrod on Sunday January 03, 2021 @08:46AM (#25621716)
Eh, it's fine even despite your hyperbole. Applied mathematicians such as myself often use python without complaint. Setting up sympy takes no effort. Plus, #python on freenode.
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Re:A new release for GNU Octave by williamstein on Sunday January 03, 2021 @08:45AM (#25621709)
SageMath solves these problems.
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Re:A new release for GNU Octave by abdullahkhalids on Sunday January 03, 2021 @11:08AM (#25622549)
It does not. I tried to replicate some symbolic computation code I wrote during my PhD in Mathematica in SageMath, and I just failed to get anywhere despite weeks of trying. I don't think I don't understand SageMath enough.
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Re:A new release for GNU Octave by tomrod on Sunday January 03, 2021 @08:46AM (#25621722)
Exactly. Grandparent commenter is complaining about resolved issues that the community worked out years ago.
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