Learning to use MAGMA

I'm trying to learn to use MAGMA for research in group theory, but it's been slow going. I've been using the MAGMA handbook provided online, but it's rather hard to learn with. I feel like it's hard to find anything in the handbook unless you already know what to look for.

Anyone know any good resources for learning MAGMA?

Solution 1:

The search function on the MAGMA website is pretty terrible. It is better to use google with the "site:..." function. E.g. try

site:http://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/magma/handbook/ p-core

in google, and compare with the result of entering the word p-core in the magma search.

Apart from that, the only way I know of learning magma is from people who already know it and are good at it. In your magma installation, you can view a lot of the source code, and a lot of it is itself written in magma (the very core is written in C). Apart from that, try to find somebody who uses magma on a regular basis and who you can talk to whenever you have a specific question.

Solution 2:

There are some notes here: http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/D.A.Craven/magma.html from a course of lectures on Magma that may be helpful.

Solution 3:

This might sound extreme, but what worked for me was to just download the entire handbook as a PDF and read through the section(s) I was interested in. All these sections are on their website, but as you mentioned, it is somewhat difficult to work with/find what you want. Although the PDF is very long (5000+ pages), the individual sections are laid out nicely (they read similar to a textbook) and usually provide both an overview of the mathematics and helpful examples (both basic and advanced). More importantly though, the PDF (unlike the website) allows one to skim an entire section rather quickly to get the 'big picture' of what Magma's capabilities are in that particular area of mathematics.