[Axiom-developer] [ScratchPad] (new)

[Bill Page]

Changes http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/ScratchPad/diff
--
Scratchpad was a computer algebra system developed at IBM
in the early 1970s. Like M&M (Maple and Mathematical) and
other systems today, Scratchpad had one principal
representation for mathematical formulae based on
"expression trees". Its user interface design was
based on a pattern-matching paradigm with infinite
rewriterule semantics, providing what we believe to be
the most natural paradigm for interactive symbolic problem
solving. Like M&M, however, user programs were interpreted,
often resulting in poor performance relative to similar
facilities coded in standard programming languages such
as FORTRAN and C.

Scratchpad development stopped in 1976 giving way to a
new system design that evolved into AXIOM. AXIOM has a
strongly-typed programming language for building a
library of parameterized types and algorithms, and a
type-inferencing interpreter that accesses the library
and can build any of an infinite number of types for
interactive use.

*From: How to Make Axiom into a ScratchPad", Jenks and Trager, 1994.*

--
forwarded from http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/address@hidden