Re: [HoTT] How to make software without money

["andré hirschowitz" <"a..."@unice.fr>]

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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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