Visit our site to listen to past episodes, support the show, join our community, and sign up for our mailing list. Summary Looking for an open source alternative to Mathematica or MatLab for solving algebraic equations? Look no further than the excellent SymPy project. It is a well built and easy to use Computer Algebra System (CAS) and in this episode we spoke with the current project maintainer Aaron Meurer about its capabilities and when you might want to use it. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or RSS Follow us on Twitter or Google+ Give us feedback! Leave a review on iTunes, Tweet to us, send us an email or leave us a message on Google+ Join our community at discourse.pythonpodcast.com to follow up with the guests and help us make the show better! nn I would like to thank everyone who has donated to the show. Your contributions help us make the show sustainable. For details on how to support the show you can visit our site at pythonpodcast.com Linode is sponsoring us this week. Check them out at linode.com/podcastinit and get a $20 credit to try out their fast and reliable Linux virtual servers for your next project I would also like to thank Hired, a job marketplace for developers, for sponsoring this episode of Podcast.__init__. Use the link hired.com/podcastinit and double your signing bonus to $4,000. We are recording today on January 18th, 2016 and your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti Today we are interviewing Aaron Meurer about SymPy Interview with Aaron Meurer Introductions How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris What is Sympy and what kinds of problems does it aim to solve? – Chris How did the SymPy project get started? – Tobias How did you get started with the SymPy project? – Chris Are there any limits to the complexity of the equations SymPy can model and solve? – Chris How does SymPy compare to similar projects in other languages? – Tobias How does Sympy render results using such beautiful mathematical symbols when the inputs are simple ASCII? – Chris What are some of the challenges in creating documentation for a project like SymPy that is accessible to non-experts while still having the necessary information for professionals in the fields of mathematics? – Tobias Which fields of academia and business seem to be most heavily represented in the users of SymPy? – Tobias What are some of the uses of Sympy in education outside of the obvious like students checking their homework? – Chris How does SymPy integrate with the Jupyter Notebook? – Chris Is SymPy generally used more as an interactive mathematics environment or as a library integrated within a larger application? – Tobias What were the challenges moving SymPy from Python 2 to Python 3? – Chris Are there features of Python 3 that simplify your work on SymPy or that make it possible to add new features that would have been too difficult previously? – Tobias Were there any performance bottlenecks you needed to overcome in creating Sympy? – Chris What are some of the interesting design or implementation challenges you’ve found when creating and maintaining SymPy? – Chris Are there any new features or major updates to SymPy that are planned? – Tobias How is the evolution of SymPy managed from a feature perspective? Have there been any occasions in recent memory where a pull request had to be rejected because it didn’t fit with the vision for the project? – Tobias Which of the features of SymPy do you find yourself using most often? – Tobias Picks Tobias Functional Geekery Nekrogoblikon Heavy Meta Marble Fun Run Chris Surprisingly Awesome All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace Pizzicato 5 Mayflower Hoppy Brown Ale Aaron Fermat’s Library catimg iTerm2 Keep In Touch Twitter Mailing List Gitter Channel Links Project Euler Richardson’s Theorem Doing Math With Python by Amit Saha (and Aaron’s book review) The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA