David McInnis
Hmmm... yes, another wiki...
I'm a senior imaging scientist, or so they tell me. I've used PV-Wave / IDL since ..oh, 1998 or so. Mostly for astronomy and satellite imagery analysis. I used to complain about IDL... until I tried Matlab. What a piece of work that is! Anyway, having decided to go "job-free" I find the idea of shelling out $2500 or so for either rather appalling. Sage _looks_ like a truly brilliant venture. It's all that Python goodness I keep hearing about wrapped up in a powerful bundle and handed out for free.
I've given the others a shot; Octave, Freemat, Scilab, Eggenberg... (oh wait, scratch that last one, it was pretty good).. but I ran into serious short-comings in each. So far, Sage has surpassed these.
Current Standing
I'm playing around, trying to learn both Python and Sage while analyzing stock data (hey, who knows..?). I desperately need to hook in an IDE, preferably something simple like Geany. I'll write it up if I succeed.
The potential for Sage as an educational tool frankly astonishes me. If only we had had such tools available in calculus or even trigonometry (1980's)! Honestly, Sage may turn out great for my own development, and may be fantastic for publications, but the real value, IMHO, is in the education arena.
But... that's just a newbie's view. Reality will set in over time.
Email: <cirrus AT gatohaus DOT com>
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