I'm a systems design engineer so there was no way I'd use Excel for ODE solving unless I had no other choice. Matlab and Maple are the two languages I know best

I'm a systems design engineer so there was no way I'd use Excel for ODE solving unless I had no other choice. Matlab and Maple are the two languages I know best, but I'd also consider Fortran, Octave, Python, or Scilab for something like that, with C++ probably last (C++ for numerics is a pain since you have to convert between different packages for basic types like matrices and vectors). I'd probably also consider Julia, but I'm not that familiar with it yet. I had hopes for Fortress, but that died a quick death. I've been a part of the SymPy team for several years including mentoring GSoC for two of those years. The problem with SageMath is that you still have to convince people who are familiar with Excel to learn a new environment. Part of the reason why Excel is taught to the undergrads in that civil engineering program is that they use it in their co-op jobs. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle since they don't learn any alternative as students so they go with what they know in their jobs.