> I haven't used sage. How does it measure up vs. Mathematica and Maple? Sage can produce some very interesting results, but it has a rather steep learning cur

> I haven't used sage. How does it measure up vs. Mathematica and Maple? Sage can produce some very interesting results, but it has a rather steep learning curve and requires more study and time than the commercial alternatives. Sage has a full house of powerful mathematical tools, suitable for professionals as well as students, but you have to read more documentation than its alternatives require, and there are no sophisticated tab-completion features and wizards to accomplish various tasks. One of Sage's advantages is that it can use a browser as an interface, offering a pretty nice working environment that relies on the browser's abilities. Example: http://i.imgur.com/VvrGng2.png http://i.imgur.com/VvrGng2.png Over time Sage has gotten much better, mostly because of all the skilled volunteers finding and fixing bugs and writing new abilities into the feature set. But it's not Mathematica, and it's not US$2500.00 for a license (alternative: US$1000.00 per year) (source: http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/how-to-buy/industry-individuals.html http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/how-to-buy/industry-indiv...).