RE: [HoTT] How to make software without money

["Joyal, André" <"joyal..."@uqam.ca>]

Dear Andrej,

I am not an expert in software, but Agda and Coq offer something
that Mathematica and Maple dont have: a calculus of proofs.

Regards, 
-André


________________________________________
From: homotopyt...@googlegroups.com [homotopyt...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Andrej Bauer [andrej...@andrej.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 12, 2016 7:05 AM
To: andré hirschowitz
Cc: HomotopyT...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [HoTT] How to make software without money

While the efforts expanded on Coq and Agda are truly impressive and
chivalrous, both pieces of software compare poorly to something like
Mathematica in terms of software quality (documentation, professional
GUI design, technical support, cloud support, etc.) This is not a
criticism of the Coq and Agda teams, just an observation which in
Slovene could be summarized by the phrase "that's the music you get
for the money you paid".

Also, I am not trying to start a war with the lurking Knights of the
Open Source. I am just saying we have no idea how to bring open-source
mathematical software to the level of professional software without
sacrificing the careers of several PhDs and at least one tenured
professor.

With kind regards,

Andrej



On Sun, Jun 12, 2016 at 12:55 PM, andré hirschowitz <a...@unice.fr> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been thinking to this issue for years (decades?). In France we have
> this research agency INRIA which has been supporting the Coq project for
> decades, leading to a fairly "good quality software" (in my opinion). Say
> twenty years ago, the Coq project was targetting the computer science
> community and was not ready to "attack" the mathematical community. From
> this side, the picture seems much better nowadays.
>
> A possible strategy toward the investment of the mathematical community is
> as follows:
>
> ------------------------
>
> 1- create a body tying (part of) this community with for instance (part of)
> the Coq project (and/or the Agda project, about which I know little).
>
> 2- obtain specific funding from a Research Agency (NSF, CNRS?) for partly
> formalized PhD fellowships, together with companion funding for the
> technical support (eg from the Coq team) to the (partial) formalization.
>
> 3- obtain good applications, coming from ouside this community.
>
> 4- select the winning applications regarding both the interest of the naked
> thesis, and the feasability of the (partial) formalization.
>
> 5- help collectively the success of each selected project.
>
> 6- Write assessments in particular for the formalization efforts of these
> newage doctors, so that they win positions whenever they deserve.
>
> ---------------------------
>
> I leave it here.
>
> ah
>
>
>
>
> 2016-06-12 10:04 GMT+02:00 Andrej Bauer <andrej...@andrej.com>:
>>
>> Apologies for a slightly off topic post, but I think it is relevant to
>> many people on this list.
>>
>> I just looked at some slides by William Stein, the author of Sage (an
>> open-source alternative to Mathematica) at
>> http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4127
>>
>> The conclusion is: it's impossible to make good quality software in
>> academia because there isn't enough money and because making software
>> doesn't give one any academic credit.
>>
>> I am afraid formalization of math might fall into the same category,
>> unless we somehow elevate it to a "true science" level. A great deal
>> has been done in this respect recently by projects lead by Gonthier,
>> Hales and Voevodsky, but is it enough? Are we even making a dent?
>>
>> At my department, for instance, the folk knowledge propagated from one
>> generation to another is that "someone" formalized "Landau's book" (I
>> suppose it was the Automath formlaization of Landau's Grundlagen der
>> Analysis by Jutting) which proves that "it can be done" but is
>> otherwise an intellectually barren exercise without academic value. I
>> still remember one of the professors saying this to the whole class
>> when was an undergraduate.
>>
>> With kind regards,
>>
>> Andrej
>>
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