Talk:Macsyma

message: Macsyma as a Common Lisp program: today you would likely use a Common Lisp version of Macsyma. Maclisp is long gone. In the page there are mentioned the implementations in Gold Hill Lisp (which is a Common Lisp) and CLOE (Common Lisp Operating Environment). Maxima is also written in Common Lisp. Common Lisp was designed to be backwards compatible, so that ancient software like Macsyma can be ported with relatively little effort. Anybody now using Macsyma and derivatives (and not looking at the historical ancient Macsyma) would see a Common Lisp program and would try it in a Common Lisp implementations. -- RJ (comment by 85.182.78.172 at 2007-12-22T13:42:47)
Yes, I agree that Common Lisp is largely backwards compatible with MacLisp (in which Macsyma was written), and indeed most old Lisp programs can be moved to Common Lisp without too much difficulty.  So I suppose if you're interested in a catalogue of software which can be run under Common Lisp, Macsyma qualifies.  But Wikipedia is not a software catalogue, it is an encyclopedia; if you're interested in the programming style and history of Macsyma, it's bizarre to say that it's a Common Lisp program. After all, almost all Unix/Linux programs can run under Windows (using cygwin etc.); should we then say that grep is a "Windows program"?  That seems silly.  --Macrakis (talk) 07:01, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Macsyma as a

message: I have removed a unsourced paragraph on numerical capabilities of Macsyma for several reasons. Firstly, it asserts that the weakness of Macsyma was to be inefficient for tasks for which it was not designed (numerical capabilities well performed by Fortran). Secondly, it asserts that the weak impact of Macsyma in the engineering world was due to these weak numerical capabilities. This was, maybe, the opinion of some of the developers, but certainly not a consensus. Moreover, this weak impact was not a specificity of Macsyma, but was shared, until must later, by all computer algebra. Around 2002, I participated to a discussion panel on this subject, where we could not reached. Thus comparing Macsyma and Fortran, and discussing the impact of Macsyma in industry is WP:OR, and does belongs to Wikipedia. D.Lazard (talk) 07:25, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Paragraph removed 

message: The development section has always listed contributions throughout the entire history of the development of Macsyma. Please to not attempt to truncate it at some arbitrary date. This would be difficult to do in a reasonable manner (e.g. because various projects had long development cycles and went through various stages of prereleases and limited releases. Be aware that the contributions list is far from complete. Hopefully others will help to complete it. --Bill D.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.233.247.156 (talk) 20:23, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: This contribution list appears in the section devoted to the development of Macsyma at MIT. It is thus misleading to include here later developments. If you want to include later contributions, this must appear in another section. In any case, everything must be sourced, not only because it is a rule of Wikipedia, but also for distinguishing the contributions specific to Macsyma from the implementation in Macsyma, without specific added value, of algorithms developed elsewhere. D.Lazard (talk) 09:29, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please don't truncate the contributions list