On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 8:06 PM <rhkra...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Somewhat OT, but (maybe) interesting anyway? > > For a long time, I've been aware of the program Mathmatica (by Wolfram > Research) that does a lot of math, including, iirc, things like symbolic > integration and differentiation. (Everybody should have those capabilities at > their finger tips ;-) > > Anyway, my thinking on this topic is that I wouldn't mind having a program > dedicated to the uses the OP brought up (I keep a session of bc - l open in a > terminal for quick calculations). > > But I couldn't remember the name of the Mathmatica program (nor the guy who > wrote it, who is fairly famous for it), so I went googling and came up with > the following pages which reminded me of the name, but also pointed out that, > apparently if you buy a Raspberry Pi, you get a free copy of Mathmatica. So, > I will seriously consider buying a Raspberry Pi. > > (The (Wikipedia) pages listed below also give the names of various competitors > to Mathmatica, including Mathcad -- disclaimer -- I've never used either of > these programs, nor probably any of the others listed on these pages (but I > didn't really look at the names of the other programs):) > > * [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_algebra_systems]] > > * [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_numerical- > analysis_software]]
Funny you should write this just when I'm hacking away in maxima. Maxima works well in debian and every other platform, and it's my go-to software for working with symbolic calculations and rational numbers. To be honest, I use it whenever I need to calculate *anything*, because it always gives exact results by default. It's also nice to use software where the source code has comments from the seventies. None of this modern C rubbish. I can recommend wxMaxima which renders the formulas a little cleaner. I personally try to stay away from closed software and hardware which is why I use debian, and why I don't want neither Mathematica nor a Raspberry Pi.
