Re: Mathematica vs. MACSYMA

From: Richard Fateman (fateman_at_cs.berkeley.edu)
Date: 12/21/04 

Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 17:10:49 GMT

You've gotten pretty good answers, so far..

symbio wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> What are the differences between MACSYMA and Mathematica? Is there anything
> that MACSYMA can do that Mathematica cannot do?

It depends on what you mean by "do". Can these systems, say, play chess?
Um, yes, if you write a chess-playing program in them. (Actually you may
be able to find a chess program and link to either one.) If they each
claimed to have a facility, say "solve", does that mean that these
do the same thing? Usually not.

I assume that all of mathematica could be simulated on macsyma, and vice versa,
usually at some suitably slower pace. (Thought sometimes faster!)

   Or that one can do better
> than the other?

Certainly there are some things that can be done faster by one than the
other. Are those things of any interest to you? For example, if I told
you that one program had a far superior command to tell you the nth
decimal digit of pi, would that matter?

  I've beeb using Mathematica for a while now, but I'm
> considering using MACSYMA because I'm tired of buggy Mathematica which needs
> constant expensive upgrades, MACSYMA is free, however it's old.

There are fans of older versions of Mathematica -- you don't
have to upgrade, and in fact you may avoid the bugs of newer versions
this way.

  I don't
> know much else about it, anyone care to share their thought on this subject,
> that would be great. Thanks in advance ya'all.

I encourage you to try maxima if you want a change. My favorite download would include
wxmaxima, which has a nice 2-d variable-size font display front end,
an automatic interface to gnuplot, and access to everything else, so
far as I can tell. (that's assuming you are using windows. if you
are using linux, I think things are even better).

RJf

>
>

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