[Chicago] Advice about a Java program?

Wed Oct 15 08:49:12 CEST 2014

My personal opinion is that a lot of people underestimate Maple,
Mathematica and Matlab as computational and graphics tools.  You can create
some great graphs using Python's matplotlib package, no doubt, but usually
it's just easier to use Maple, Mathematica or Matlab.  Fewer lines of code
and you end up with the same output.  I think the reason why many people
are kind of prejudiced against Maple, Mathematica and Matlab is because
those platforms are commercial and proprietary.  Python is open source,
giving it a big advantage.  But that raises an interesting question.  How
do the Python developers make their rent and mortgage payments if they are
not compensated for their efforts?  When I don't have to pay back my
college loans, that's when I'll happily create free software for others to
use!  In the meantime I expect to get paid for the work that I do!   :-)

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 12:35 PM, Randy Baxley <randy7771026 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Old guy here.  Most important thing to remember about Wolfram is that he
> loves Nutty Buddy frozen treats.  OK and maybe Mathematica.  Did not ever
> incorporate it in our AI to predict the intraday trends on tick data in the
> commodities markets.  It was very useful though in visualizing for the DSP
> folks what we wanted and for the clients what they were trading on.
>
> On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 7:51 AM, Tanya Schlusser <tanya at tickel.net> wrote:
>
>> Wolfram's SMP was his doctoral research project; he got his PhD at
>> Caltech at age 20...the age that I think I finally graduated from Basic on
>> the Commodore 64 to 'hello world' in the school computer lab.
>>
>> In my Lisp class, they said Wolfram's doctoral work made the world's
>> first symbolic equation solver -- tackling the really hard AI problem of
>> the day. FWIW, at the time the Prof. said Optical Character Recognition was
>> the world's really hard AI problem...now solved in open source software.
>> What a distance we've come.
>>
>> ~Tanya
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 5:00 AM, <chicago-request at python.org> wrote:
>>
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>>> Today's Topics:
>>>
>>>    1. Re: Advice about a Java program? (Toby, Brian H.)
>>>    2. Re: Quick Poll: what editor or IDE do you use? (John Stoner)
>>>
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 1
>>> Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 22:44:08 +0000
>>> From: "Toby, Brian H." <toby at anl.gov>
>>> To: The Chicago Python Users Group <chicago at python.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [Chicago] Advice about a Java program?
>>> Message-ID: <DA2188F5-C1E4-47B8-A125-A4C88744F778 at anl.gov>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>>>
>>>
>>> but Wolfram himself is a pretty despicable guy. He allegedly screwed
>>> over a few of his cofounders early on in his company's career and took
>>> their credit and intellectual property.
>>>
>>> FWIW, Mathematica was his second effort. My recollection (from many
>>> years back and perhaps not 100% accurate) is that he wrote the first
>>> program, called SMP (for symbolic math processing, or something like that)
>>> for his research. It ran only on a VAX. When he wanted to copyright it and
>>> market it, Caltech, where he was a postdoc, claimed ownership under the
>>> patent agreement that we students and employees signed (which did not cover
>>> copyrights) and sued. Caltech had way more money to spend on lawyers and
>>> won and then marketed SMP. FWIW, it was the largest program I had ever seen
>>> at that time and was the only program I even encountered that could
>>> actually crash a VAX.  Steve started again from scratch and created
>>> Mathematica. SMP did not ever get ported to any other platform.
>>>
>>> I can?t speak to any of the above, but I believe he was screwed over by
>>> Caltech.
>>>
>>> Brian
>>>
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>>> Message: 2
>>> Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 22:20:24 -0500
>>> From: John Stoner <johnstoner2 at gmail.com>
>>> To: The Chicago Python Users Group <chicago at python.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [Chicago] Quick Poll: what editor or IDE do you use?
>>> Message-ID:
>>>         <
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>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>>
>>> I use Sublime, and I'm pretty happy with it. Vim on occasion.
>>>
>>> On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 1:25 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 11:05 AM, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com>
>>> > wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> I'm just a lurker here, actually Python User Group is more home
>>> (where I
>>> >> live) but I was born in Chicago, so hey.
>>> >>
>>> >> Got to Detroit recently... Toledo...
>>> >>
>>> >> Anyway, as a Python mentor for O'Reilly, we start them in a browser
>>> tool
>>> >> (custom) then graduate 'em to Eclipse + PyDev on a remote desktop in
>>> >> Illinois someplace, a more realistic simulation and time to use a
>>> real IDE
>>> >> (could be anything good, but Eclipse is low cost as in free and highly
>>> >> customizable by our staff guy in Carson City).
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> > I should add that RDC (remote desktop connection) can bottleneck in
>>> some
>>> > routers and some of our would-be Eclipse users report a disappointing
>>> lag
>>> > time, which of course I've noticed as a traveler.
>>> >
>>> > Here in Portland it's not an issue usually, though some spots in the
>>> > airport have close to no WiFi at all (we're still backwater for an
>>> airport,
>>> > but what we do have is free).
>>> >
>>> > Anyway, for those wanting to keep going anyway, despite RDC issues that
>>> > don't resolve, they may ssh into our server and use vim if they wish.
>>> >
>>> > Our Python courses 2-4 use Eclipse clients back ending into the same
>>> Linux
>>> > ecosystem the started in Beginner Python 1 with i.e. the sandbox
>>> they've
>>> > used in bash is now seen through a V: drive (for "virtual" -- though
>>> "V:
>>> > for victory" is good too if one is looking for good omens and
>>> > encouragement).
>>> >
>>> > Sometimes I'll ssh in and do a vim thing too, so like many Pythonistas,
>>> > it's a mixed bag with me.  Resume-wise, I cut my teeth on xBase in
>>> Windows
>>> > after APL on an IBM 370.  I'm one of those FoxPro refugees in other
>>> words.
>>> >
>>> > Kirby
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > Chicago mailing list
>>> > Chicago at python.org
>>> > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago
>>> >
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> blogs:
>>> http://johnstoner.wordpress.com/
>>> 'In knowledge is power; in  wisdom, humility.'
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>>
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