from Hacker News

Maxima in the browser using Embedded Common Lisp on WASM

by v9v on 1/28/25, 3:37 PM with 53 comments

by r85804306610 on 1/28/25, 4:09 PM

because nobody knows maxima, some things to try. also plot2d/plot3d work, so that's pretty neat. the whole thing is powered by https://ecl.common-lisp.dev and the op announcement is here https://mailman3.common-lisp.net/hyperkitty/list/ecl-devel@c...

  :lisp (+ 2 2)
  solve(f(x)^2-1,x);
  integrate(x^2,x);
  2^1024;
  factor(30!);
  a:1
  b:2
  a+b;
  sqrt(a^2+b^2);
  expr: log((x+2)*(x-2))+log(x);
  ratsimp(expr);
  fullratsimp(expr);
  trigsimp(2*cos(x)^2 + sin(x)^2);
  solve(x^3=1,x);
  diff(sin(x), x);
  float([%e,%pi,%phi,%gamma]);
  f(x):=x^2;
  f(10);
  taylor(sin(x),x,0,5);
  plot2d(x^2-x+3,[x,-10,10]);
  plot2d([x^2, x^3, x^4 -x +1] ,[x,-10,10]);
  f(x,y):= sin(x) + cos(y);
  plot3d(f(x,y), [x,-5,5], [y,-5,5]);

by unusual-name on 1/28/25, 4:23 PM
We used maxima extensively in high school. I remember that I forgot to bring my laptop when we had our first maxima lesson. My teachers understandably scolded me for not bringing my laptop to school, but to their surprise I found an online version of maxima. [1] While it was good enough for this period, in contrast to this implementation it was truly awful.
I just think it's kinda sad that a lot of people never heard of maxima, as it is a pretty decent tool once you learn how to use it.
[1] http://www.dma.ufv.br/maxima/index.php
by veryveryold on 1/28/25, 4:16 PM
(to_lisp); (loop for i below 1000000 count t) takes 0.34 seconds on my system with vanilla maxima (on gcl). In the browser it takes about 7 seconds, so it must be a factor of 21 in computer time. Using sbcl outside maxima it takes 0.002 seconds. So one can get some idea about performance.
Perhaps it could be combined with J (array language), like in the playground https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Playground that is using webassembly
It seems to work very well locally without connection to the web.
by v9v on 1/28/25, 3:56 PM
Raymond Toy posted this on the ECL mailing list: https://mailman3.common-lisp.net/hyperkitty/list/ecl-devel@c...
by vindarel on 1/28/25, 11:31 PM
I'll add options to run Maxima:
* [Maxima on Android](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.yhonda), built with ECL.
* [Maxima on Jupyter](https://github.com/robert-dodier/maxima-jupyter)
* Maxima can be used via [SageMath](https://www.sagemath.org/) and [KDE Cantor](https://apps.kde.org/cantor/).
* Of course, with Emacs: [maxima-mode](https://gitlab.com/sasanidas/maxima) ([screenshot](https://community.linuxmint.com/img/screenshots/maxima-emacs...))
and [maxima-interface](https://github.com/jmbr/maxima-interface) to ease the interface between Maxima and Common Lisp.
* it can be used [from a Lisp REPL](https://mahmoodsheikh36.github.io/post/20230510181916-maxima...).
(and [wxMaxima](https://wxmaxima-developers.github.io/wxmaxima/): a graphical frontend as mentioned earlier)
(find the links and more scientific libraries for CL on https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl)
by phoe-krk on 1/28/25, 9:28 PM
It's called "Embeddable Common Lisp", not "Embedded Common Lisp".
https://ecl.common-lisp.dev/
by magicalhippo on 1/28/25, 4:08 PM
I've tried Maxima on a few occasions but the syntax somehow fails to agree with me.
Been looking for a self-hosted alternative to Wolfram Alpha, and just stumbled over Mathics, which has a Django front-end[1]. Rough but usable Mathematica alternative, at least for basic use.
[1]: https://github.com/Mathics3/mathics-django
by maple3142 on 1/28/25, 6:21 PM
Similar project: PARI/GP on WASM https://pari.math.u-bordeaux.fr/gpexpwasm.html
by trott on 1/29/25, 1:32 AM
How do Maxima and SymPy compare in terms of capability, features and speed (native, not WASM)?
by fsckboy on 1/28/25, 6:00 PM
tangential: can Macsyma/Maxima do symbolic boolean algebra, reducing formulae to bog standard "OR of ANDs" form?
(I've tried looking at the doc, and it's clearly not a feature they showcase, and as others have said, the way it works is not intuitive to me. I really need this, but trying to do it in lisp is becoming its own project and I want to get back to my project. I found some really nice online reducers, but the UIs are not conducive to pasting/putting in simultaneous equations, and using those outputs as inputs again)
by azakai on 1/28/25, 7:01 PM
It looks like the wasm file here is not fully optimized. Reading the wasm and JS, I'd guess -O1 perhaps? Linking with -O3 would make it smaller and possibly faster (10% smaller binary in a quick local test, and it removes 90% of locals, which should speed things up too)
But it is possible that it's already fast enough for the purposes here, and this doesn't matter.
by fud101 on 1/29/25, 2:24 AM
I love Maxima, i don't really need a CAS much these days but whenever I do, I will turn to Maxima.
by hackernj on 1/28/25, 4:11 PM
Nice. I've been using this Maxima interpreter: http://www.dma.ufv.br/maxima/index.php
by gtpedrosa on 1/28/25, 8:28 PM
This brings back memories. We used this in my mechanical engineering mechanisms class. It was cool to have the (simplified!) symbolic formulas describing the movements we were designing.
by phkahler on 1/28/25, 7:34 PM
Is there a place to get a wxmaxima installer for Windows other than SourceForge? I no longer trust stuff from there.
by soegaard on 1/28/25, 9:04 PM
This is great?
Feature request: A way to easily copy old expressions into the current input field (to fix mistakes).
by dartos on 1/28/25, 5:16 PM
How did you get Common Lisp running on wasm? I thought wasm didn’t support tail call recursive
by openrisk on 1/28/25, 5:20 PM
omg, macsyma is still alive and I can now manipulate real tensors in the browser?