Re: [Gretl-devel] functions vs commands (was Re: Octave support)

On Tue, 2 Mar 2010, Allin Cottrell wrote: Thanks, Allin, you're a mind-reader: you made my point much better than I could. I don't consider Sven's claims unfounded. Not at all. But, Sven, you're not just another guy. You're someone who's savvy enough to know how verison numbers in the free software realm work. You're someone who's been using gretl for ages and knows exactly what the little girl can and can't do. You're someone who can code in Python, and is not afraid of using several statistical packages at once. In a word, you're not the average applied economist, who learns things by rote, who copies-n-pastes the same LaTeX preamble for all his documents not knowing exactly what's in there, who sticks to the one econometrics program he (sort of) knows for everything, because "I can't be bothered with learning another one, and besides, isn't $package what everyone uses?" Let me put it this way: IMO gretl as a project _needs_ a version 2.0 in the next few months. There must be fanfare, hype, a marching band and everything. If we must introduce compatibility-breaking changes, it must be at that point. The list of features I mentioned in my previous post is merely a suggestion: it's simply what I think a complete econometrics package should have in AD 2010 and we don't have yet. Then, sure, multivariate GARCH models are nice, but IMHO are not a "must have". Of course, I'm open to suggestions. Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti Dipartimento di Economia Università Politecnica delle Marche r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it http://www.econ.univpm.it/lucchetti