On 8/10/05, Matthew Nobes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > One particular question I had was wether anybody here had experiance > with maxima as a replacement for maple/mathmatica?
As a symbolic algebra environment, Maxima is quite powerful, and pretty much anything can be implemented within it. It also implements differentiation, integration, ode solvers, linear and algebraic equation solvers, matrix operations, tensors, polynomial algebra, number theory, special functions, and some numerical tools. In almost every case, the commercial systems like Maple or Mathematica implement more features in each of these areas. For rudimentary tasks (module some bugs), however, Maxima is fairly sufficient once the user gets past the learning curve. However, Maxima (which used to be called MACSYMA) is a very old system. As a consequence it's somewhat crufty and parts of the code have not been touched in decades. Recently, a more modern computer algebra system has entered Debian, Axiom. I have not used it only briefly. From what I've seen, it still looses to commercial systems in the amount of implemented features available, but in principle is just as powerful. There is also a learning curve. Perhaps I've not completely climbed it yet, but the strong type system of Axiom makes it somewhat hard to use for elementary tasks. Perhaps someone more familiar with Axiom can comment in more detail. And of course, using TeXmacs for Maxima or Axiom provides beautiful typesetting. Unfortunately, the communication between the frontend and backend is sometimes buggy. Igor
