Subject: magma and algebraic topology
From: Andrew Salch <asalch@math.rochester.edu>
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 14:09:44 -0500 (EST)

Hi, I'm a student of Doug Ravenel's, working on some 
computational problems in the Adams-Novikov spectral 
sequence. I'm writing a fair bit of computer code to 
handle parts of these computations, and I'm in the 
process of switching over to the Magma programming 
language, because it seems well-suited to doing algebra. 
I have algorithms for two tasks: deciding whether a given 
cocycle in a certain class of cobar complexes is a coboundary, 
and working out the cohomology of certain Lie algebras which 
are built up out of central extensions of abelian Lie algebras;
 both of these are important to the computations I am doing, 
and I have an algorithm for each, but I'm trying to learn 
right now how to tell Magma to actually carry out these 
algorithms! If other algebraic topologists have used Magma 
and have some libraries already written for common topological 
tasks, or have some tips for a beginner at Magma, it would be 
great to hear about it.

Thanks,
Andrew S.