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I saw Prof. Stein's talk at JupyterCon last year and was blown away by what he had accomplished with CoCalc. It was one of the best talks at the conference IMO.

I saw Prof. Stein's talk at JupyterCon last year and was blown away by what he had accomplished with CoCalc. It was one of the best talks at the conference IMO. Very excited to see where CoCalc is headed and wish Prof. Stein all the best. Edit: here is the talk https://pyvideo.org/jupytercon-2018/real-time-collaboration-with-jupyter-notebooks-using-cocalc-william-stein-sagemath-inc.html https://pyvideo.org/jupytercon-2018/real-time-collaboration-...

williamstein 8y ago
Thanks! I'm currently working on realtime collaboration for ipywidgets, which is an interesting challenge.
fspeech 8y ago
Thanks for the link. Watching it I can't help but feel a little sad. Prof. Stein is a highly trained mathematician with a track record in establishing successful software projects like Sage that many people benefit tremendously from (watching the video I learned that he actually started Cython as well!). It says something about the state of affairs -- the general lack of awareness and interest in the development of math unless it benefits some business directly -- when he could not find the resource needed to develop the math software he loved the way he wanted to. Maybe he really enjoyed working on the sync protocols, text formats, backend databases and file systems etc needed to get CoCalc running smoothly. But I wonder if he had the resource he needed would he make the same choice? I say this as I have a son who is double majoring in CS and math. As a freshman he is already mostly done with upper division math (3 A+ in honors real and complex analysis) and is taking graduate math classes. Yet it seems prudent for him to at least put in the minimum effort to get his CS degree to keep his option open. Eventually it will be a hard choice down the road for him as well.
- williamstein 8y ago
  > But I wonder if he had the resource he needed would he make the same choice? If I had the resources I needed, I definitely would not have made the same choice. Though I enjoy somewhat working on sync protocols, databases, etc., it is only a means to an end. Mathematics software is much deeper and more interesting me. If I had sufficient resources a few years ago, I absolutely would have instead built a team to work fulltime on Sage, similar to how John Cannon successfully built an amazing team around Magma, partly leveraging that Magma is closed source and commercial -- https://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/ https://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/.

williamstein 8y ago

Thanks! I'm currently working on realtime collaboration for ipywidgets, which is an interesting challenge.

fspeech 8y ago

Thanks for the link. Watching it I can't help but feel a little sad. Prof. Stein is a highly trained mathematician with a track record in establishing successful software projects like Sage that many people benefit tremendously from (watching the video I learned that he actually started Cython as well!). It says something about the state of affairs -- the general lack of awareness and interest in the development of math unless it benefits some business directly -- when he could not find the resource needed to develop the math software he loved the way he wanted to. Maybe he really enjoyed working on the sync protocols, text formats, backend databases and file systems etc needed to get CoCalc running smoothly. But I wonder if he had the resource he needed would he make the same choice? I say this as I have a son who is double majoring in CS and math. As a freshman he is already mostly done with upper division math (3 A+ in honors real and complex analysis) and is taking graduate math classes. Yet it seems prudent for him to at least put in the minimum effort to get his CS degree to keep his option open. Eventually it will be a hard choice down the road for him as well.

williamstein 8y ago
> But I wonder if he had the resource he needed would he make the same choice? If I had the resources I needed, I definitely would not have made the same choice. Though I enjoy somewhat working on sync protocols, databases, etc., it is only a means to an end. Mathematics software is much deeper and more interesting me. If I had sufficient resources a few years ago, I absolutely would have instead built a team to work fulltime on Sage, similar to how John Cannon successfully built an amazing team around Magma, partly leveraging that Magma is closed source and commercial -- https://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/ https://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/.