Why do you prefer to work with Maxima?



>>>>> "Volker" == Volker van Nek <volkervannek at gmail.com> writes:

    Volker> 2012/11/27 Raymond Toy <toy.raymond at gmail.com>:
    >>>>>>> "Volker" == Volker van Nek <volkervannek at gmail.com> writes:
    >> 
    Volker> The topic of differential equations is only one among a lot of
    Volker> interesting mathematical topics. So I would like to answer a little
    Volker> bit more in general.
    >> 
    Volker> I work with Maxima because it is powerful and released under the GNU
    Volker> GPL. Other software like Matlab or Maple which does not fulfill these
    Volker> two conditions is from my point of view completely useless. In the
    >> 
    >> What about Octave, the matlab clone?  I'm just curious, since it is
    >> clearly GPL.  Is it not powerful enough?  Or is it because it doesn't
    >> do symbolic math?

    Volker> I didn't say that Octave is not powerful !  I don't know it very well
    Volker> but I can imagine that it fulfills my two conditions. And there is a

As I said, I was just kind of curious since matlab didn't fulfill your
criteria.

    Volker> lot of GPL software which is also really worth to look at:  Scilab,
    Volker> Yacas, Pari/GP, GAP, ..

Indeed.  I use Octave when I want to crunch some numbers in a syntax
that is more convenient than Maxima.  But otherwise, I use Maxima as a
glorified graphing/symbolic calculator, for the most part. :-)

Ray