Which Software is Better: Mathematica or Maple?

[germana2006]

Which of the two softwares (Mathematica and Maple) what do you think is better?

 

[chroot]

Which fruit do you think is better, the apple or the orange?

- Warren

 

[cristo]

I prefer apples: oranges are too messy!

(I think chroot's point is that they are two different packages and thus cannot be compared. Having never used mathematica, I cannot comment.)

 

[chroot]

Well, each package could probably be said to be better at certain kinds of problems, but we have no idea what kind of problems the OP wants to solve.

- Warren

 

[CRGreathouse]

Which of the two softwares (Mathematica and Maple) what do you think is better?

Pari/GP.

Which fruit do you think is better, the apple or the orange?

Pineapple.

 

[las3rjock]

Mathematica.

 

[vincentm]

I prefer apples: oranges are too messy!

(I think chroot's point is that they are two different packages and thus cannot be compared. Having never used mathematica, I cannot comment.)

Only if they're Granny Smith apples!

 

[vincentm]

Pineapple.

Somone give this man a Nobel Prize, for he speaks the truth, pineapples are the god of all fruits.

 

[CompuChip]

Let me not get into this fruit-ful discussion (in which I agree with the pineapple - ah well, you know what I mean) and answer to the original post.

I am a (hobbyist) programmer and I know quite some languages. I try to always use the right tool for the job and the same goes here. I must admit however, that -- though I have little experience with MatLab -- Mathematica is a really really powerful package which can do almost anything imaginable. So though probably Matlab is more efficient at some problems (especially numerical ones) I am inclined to favor Mathematica in this dilemma

 

[CRGreathouse]

I have access to a free educational copy of Mathematica, so I use it from time to time to see how efficient it is. But for the problems I do (number theory), I've found that Pari/GP is often 20-50% faster, and hand-coded solutions (when appropriate) are often better yet. So I have little use for Mathematica. On the other hand, for integration there's no equal to be found for Mathematica, so it's all about what you want to do.

 

[Dale]

Mathematica. In my experience it is much more stable and more functional.

 

[Werg22]

I prefer Maple, but that's only because I get it for $20.