George Muntingh1
Date: Wednesday, March 14, 2007
For a long time I've been struggling with the following problem. When you start working with a certain Computer Algebra System (CAS), you spend a lot of time becoming familiar with it, adjusting it to your preferences, writing your own functions etc. Because of this, you automatically trap yourself into using one and only one CAS for most purposes, and with time it becomes increasingly difficult to switch to any other CAS. Therefore this choice, this decision about which CAS I would ``go for", became a very important one for me.
Unfortunately it is not only very important, but also very difficult. There are many CAS out there, each of them with their own particularly attractive features. Mathematica and Maple, for instance, have a huge user base, and Axiom works with structures that are very closely related to mathematical structures (e.g. categories). In order to make the right choice, an obvious strategy is to make a list of features that can not be compromised on. Of course this is very difficult because typically you only discover what is essential when you find yourself in the position of lacking it. A rather hopeless situation if you, like me, have a relatively limited experience with CAS.
About half a year ago I became acquainted with a CAS that tries to be something distinctively different from the rest, and it is called SAGE [S2]. For short, it is a free multi-purpose CAS with a strong interaction with other existing CAS. It is mostly this ``strong interaction" that solves my problem, and in my opinion it is a revolutionary piece of software that deserves to be better known. Therefore I will try to give an overview of the features and design decisions of SAGE that make it the best option that I can use and contribute to. Before this large post scares you away, let me remark that you can try SAGE in your browser (at least in Firefox, Safari and Opera).