Joe Strout wrote: > As a student, I used Mathematica for years and loved it. But now, I no > longer qualify for an educational discount, but still have occasional > need (or desire) to do some math -- but the standard price ($2500) is > ridiculous, absolutely out of the question for me. > > So, now I'm looking for an open-source equivalent. It seems like this > would be a good candidate for open-source development, but I can't seem > to find anything that's quite what I'm looking for. I'm aware of these: > > http://web.usna.navy.mil/~wdj/opensource_math.html > > ...but none of them sound as general and powerful as Mathematica. > Maxima sounds close, though it's actually a predecessor of Mathematica; > I wonder how well it's stood up over time. > > Any opinions on these, or anything to consider not on the above list?
To the best of my knowledge, there aren't even any good free graph plotters, let along integrated technical computing environments.
I used Mathematica for my PhD and converted to OCaml and F# when I left. They are both free and vastly superior as programming languages but neither offers a typeset IDE or graph plotting.
-- Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy OCaml for Scientists http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists/?usenet
