A review of Macsyma

The successes and failures of the Macsyma algebraic manipulation system are reviewed from the point of view of one of the original contributors. A retrospective examination is provided of some of the controversial ideas that worked, and some that did not. Input/output, language semantics, knowledge-adjunction, mathematical semantics, the model of the user, and other issues are considered. Possible future directions for algebraic manipulation system building are discussed.<
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