[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell.org GSoC

[Henning Thielemann]

On Fri, 13 Feb 2009, Daniel Kraft wrote:

> Henning Thielemann wrote:

>> DoCon?
>
> hm, I've only read a little on their webpage; what I was thinking of was to 
> implement a very basic package just to do some symbolic integration or 
> equation solving to be embedded in some other calculation, and DoCon sounds 
> like a more abstract, mathematical system.
>
> So maybe there could still be some interest in a basic symbolic expression 
> package that could be backed by a CAS library like GiNaC or some other one 
> (better yet, pluggable) instead of imlementing a full CAS itself.

So it seems to be useful to make the distinction:
  * Computer algebra is doing advanced arithmetic on advanced mathematical 
objects like polynomials, Galois groups, function compositions (for 
integration). This is what DoCon is about (integration excluded).
  * Symbolic manipulation is what you are after, where symbolic 
manipulation often involves computer algebra behind the scenes (i.e. 
translating symbolic expressions to polynomials, function compositions)