{"id":7697,"date":"2016-04-02T21:31:40","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T01:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=7697"},"modified":"2016-04-03T22:13:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T02:13:14","slug":"maxima-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=7697","title":{"rendered":"Maxima"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometime last year, I foolishly volunteered to manage new releases of the <a href=\"http:\/\/maxima.sourceforge.net\/\">Maxima computer algebra system<\/a> (CAS).<\/p>\n<p>For the past several weeks, I&#8217;ve been promising to do my first release, but I kept putting it off as I had other, more pressing work obligations.<\/p>\n<p>Well, not anymore&#8230; today, I finally found the time, after brushing up on the Git version management system, and managed to put together a release, 5.38.0.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/maxima.sourceforge.net\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7698\" src=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/maxima.png\" alt=\"maxima\" width=\"872\" height=\"793\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/maxima.png 872w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/maxima-300x273.png 300w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/maxima-768x698.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 872px) 100vw, 872px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Maxima is beautiful and incredibly powerful. I have been working on its <a href=\"\/weblog\/?page_id=99\">tensor algebra packages<\/a> for the past 15 years or so. As far as I know, Maxima is the only general purpose CAS that can derive the field equations of a Lagrangian field theory; for instance, it can derive Einstein&#8217;s field equations from the Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian.<\/p>\n<p>I use Maxima a lot for tensor algebra, though I admit that when it comes to integration, differential equations or plotting, I prefer Maple. Maple&#8217;s ODE\/PDE solvers are unbeatable. But when it comes to tensor algebra, or just as a generic on-screen symbolic calculator, Maxima wins hands down. I prefer to use its command-line version: Nothing fancy, just ASCII art, but very snappy, very responsive, and does exactly what I want\u00a0it to do.<\/p>\n<p>So then, Maxima 5.38.0: Say hi to the world. World, this is the latest version of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Macsyma\">oldest<\/a> (nearly half a century old) continuously maintained CAS in existence.<\/p>\n<fb:like href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=7697' send='true' layout='standard' show_faces='true' width='450' height='65' action='like' colorscheme='light' font='lucida grande'><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometime last year, I foolishly volunteered to manage new releases of the Maxima computer algebra system (CAS). For the past several weeks, I&#8217;ve been promising to do my first release, but I kept putting it off as I had other, more pressing work obligations. Well, not anymore&#8230; today, I finally found the time, after brushing <a href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=7697' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-algebra","category-personal","category-49-id","category-35-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7697"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7704,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7697\/revisions\/7704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}