> Unless you're working on undergraduate integrals then it's pretty useless for advanced stuff without writing your own library. By that point you may as well w

> Unless you're working on undergraduate integrals then it's pretty useless for advanced stuff without writing your own library. By that point you may as well write it in a language that's more performant and cheaper. Hard disagree. Mathematica's symbolic dexterity makes abstract reasoning (with equations/expressions) very easy. Think of it as the companion tool for anyone doing pages of algebra that would go into a paper, or form the backend for some code. The numerical capabilities of Mathematica are passable but nothing fancy. Once you have the math figured out, you might even want to reimplement "in a language that's more performant and cheaper." But I haven't see anything come close to Mathematica for convenience of symbolic reasoning -- not just as a technology (lisp is pretty good) but as a ready-for-use product.