User:Macrakis

18Y

This Wikipedian joined Wikipedia on December 15, 2004 (18 years, 3 months and 1 week ago).

This editor is not an administrator and does not wish to be one.

This editor is a Master Editor
and is entitled to display this
Platinum Editor Star.

This user has created 649 articles on Wikipedia.

This user was one of the top 2500 English Wikipedians by number of edits in February 2022.

Projects

This user is a member of
WikiProject Food and drink.

This user participates in
WikiProject Greece.

This user is a member of WikiProject Computer science

This user is a member of
WikiProject Mathematics.

This user is a member of
WikiProject Boston.

This user is a participant in WikiProject Short descriptions.

Languages

en

This user is a native speaker of the English language.

el

Μητρική γλώσσα αυτού του χρήστη είναι η ελληνική.

fr-4

Cet utilisateur parle français à un niveau comparable à la langue maternelle.

it-3

Questo utente può contribuire con un livello avanzato di italiano.

grc-2

Ὅδε ὁ χρήστης δύναται συμβάλλεσθαι μετρίᾳ γνώσει τῆς ἀρχαίας ἑλληνικῆς.

de-1

Dieser Benutzer hat grundlegende Deutschkenntnisse.

es-1

Este usuario puede contribuir con un nivel básico de español.

pt-1

Este usuário/utilizador pode contribuir com um nível básico de português.

ar-1

هذا المستخدم يتحدث اللغة العربية بمستوى مبتدئ.

tr-1

Bu kullanıcı Türkçeyi düşük düzeyde anlıyor.

ota-1

Bu zat-ı muhteremin Osmanlıca'ya vâkıf olma yolunda istidâdı vardır.

Education

PhD

This user has a Doctor of Philosophy degree.

H

This user attends or attended Harvard University.

This user attends or attended
MIT.

PEA

This user attends or attended
Phillips Exeter Academy.

This user lives in or comes
from Boston.

Stavros Macrakis[edit]

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Maxima symbolic algebra system

I've worked in software for 50 years, in a variety of areas: Macsyma, a computer algebra system, and now on its open-source version Maxima; on Lisp language implementation and design; on Ada language design and compilers; on programming language design in general; on operating system kernels; on an architecture-neutral distribution format; on database management systems; on enterprise storage systems; on Web infrastructure software; on Web search; on airline pricing; on enterprise search with rich structured data; etc. My dissertation was on the design of programming languages.

I am now working on travel guides.

I have a variety of other interests.

I'm interested in linguistics and languages, especially English, Greek (fluent in modern, rusty in ancient), French (fluent), Italian (good), Latin (rusty), Arabic (basic), and Turkish (including Ottoman) (basic).

I'm interested in encyclopedias both for their form and their content, and have in my personal collection several English, French, and Greek encyclopedias from the 19th and 20th centuries.

I'm interested in architecture and design of various periods, and have a collection of kilims.

I enjoy eating and cooking, and am very interested in food history.

Barnstars[edit]

		The Original Barnstar
		Thank you so much for all of your efforts on the article Odwalla, which just recently passed FAC. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have without the work you did. Thanks again. Intothewoods29 (talk) 05:45, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

		The Socratic Barnstar
		I award you this barnstar because you are skilled and eloquent in your arguments. Antidiskriminator (talk) 19:33, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

		The Stub Barnstar
		Thanks for creating the new Lagana (dough) article, and for expanding Wikipedia's coverage of historical foods. NORTH AMERICA¹⁰⁰⁰ 04:48, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

	The Original Barnstar
	To counteract the bad faith vandalism warnings, here's a barnstar for your attempts to improve programmatic media. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 20:08, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	Thanks for improving my edits to the Dairy products article. I edited it in only about 45 minutes, and your help is appreciated. Thanks! Your Pal, MooperVeltresleex 19:37, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	Thank you for all of your help. Roy.c.white (talk) 15:22, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

	The Barnstar of Diplomacy
	Thank you for working on Talk:Marvin Minsky to resolve edit wars and conflicts in an unbiased and editorially responsible way. Gnuish (talk) 19:28, 24 September 2019 (UTC) Your patience in resolving the issue on Talk:Marvin Minsky is highly commendable. Barnstar++ from me. 83.100.188.53 (talk) 16:55, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

About Wikipedia[edit]

Wikipedia has tremendous potential, but it is discouraging to see how much effort we have to spend to deal with mindless vandalism, puerile boosterism and nationalism, and crank POV-pushing. It is also time-consuming to correct well-meaning but ill-informed enthusiasts, and to try to educate people about good research practices, but at least there you feel you're acting in an educational role.

I guess my philosophy on participating in WP is to try to be reasonable with reasonable people, and even more reasonable with unreasonable people.

I'm interested in the history of food, and contribute to WikiProject Food and drink. There is a lot of folklore and invention around the history of food, so it's especially important to have reliable sources, not just cookbooks and certainly not random Web pages, which is why I started the page on sources for food history. It's also important to maintain a neutral point of view in food history articles, and not uncritically adopt such terms as "original", "authentic", "traditional", etc. to describe foods and recipes; see my essay "Original", "traditional", "authentic", and other distracting terminology for some further thoughts.