Subject: suggested Maxima 'book': if you only had one...
From: Evan Cooch
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 21:53:45 -0400
After 15+ years working with Maple, occasional jaunts with Mathematica
and GAUSS, I'm slowly porting over a lot of CAS-based stuff to Maxima.
Mostly in a 'teaching' context (where 'free' is a definite plus for
budget-strapped students).
I find that I spend a lot of time inefficiently writing out my best
guess at how to do something in Maxima - guess strongly conditioned by
'how I would do it in Maple'), not having it work, searching the web for
'examples', and then trying again. I've decided to forgo my usual
approach to learning software (trial and error), and am hoping to 'learn
by reading' as much as possible. As such, I'm looking for suggestions
for 'where to start reading'. Of course, I've already stumbled across
the 'Maxima book' on SourceForge, but am wondering if there is something
else (nay, better?) out there that I should also consider? Not only for
my purposes, but to recommend to students who might want to delve deeper
into using Maxima for purposes beyond my class.
Thanks very much in advance...