[plt-scheme] Mathematica v6

On Nov 15, 2007 2:03 PM,  <jerzy.karczmarczuk at info.unicaen.fr> wrote:
> David Einstein writes:
>
> ...
> > Full disclosure: I have friends at Wolfram
> ...
> > Mathematica is a very good, almost indispensable, tool for symbolic
> > mathematics.  Other than the marketing department, it makes little
> > pretense to being a general purpose programming language.
>
> I wonder how far from the marketing department this term "almost
> indispensable" has been cooked, in view of the existence of Maple, Magma,
> MuPAD, Axiom, Macsyma/Maxima, perhaps MacCaulay2, GAP, etc., etc.
>
I have not played with Maple or MuPAD for five years or so, and so
cannot really compare them now.  Five years ago Mathematica seemed to
handle more of the problems that I threw at it, and that was before I
knew anyone from Wolfram.  Every few months I look at Axiom, Maxima,
sympy etc..., but frankly they are not close to being in the same
league, and seem to be losing ground over time (I would have expected
computer algebra to be a place where open source would shine, but
alas, it seems not.)  The Sage project seems to have promise, but
right now it looks like a bunch of distinct tools and a lot of duct
tape.
The more specialized tools like MacCaulay, CoCoA, Gap, Pari/GP, 4ti2,
etc. are amazing in their niches, but have no pretenses to being
widely applicable.


> Jerzy Karczmarczuk
>
>
>
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