Maple vs Mathematica: What's Better for Symbolic Manipulation, ODE, and PDE?

[graphic7]

Next year I'll be changing to a university that mainly utilizes Maple over Mathematica. I've heard Maple is better for various tasks, such as symbolic manipulation, ODE, and PDE solving. However, I've also heard that Mathematica is superior in the field of symbolic integration. I've only used Mathematica (versions 4 and 5), and I'm rather curious about Maple (since I will be using it this upcoming year). I just wanted just input from people that have Maple and/or Mathematica.

 

[Damned charming :)]

I have used maple often but I have only used mathematica once or twice. I cannot see much difference. A difference that will irritate you a bit is that you must end with a ; and you cannot write sin(2x) you have to write
sin(2*x).

 

[enigma]

It's been several years since I've used it, but to me it seemed that Maple was much more "snippy" when it comes to inputting commands.

I used Mathematica for the first time last semester and I loved it. Unfortunately, matrices and data manipulation weren't streamlined enough for my tastes, so I'm back to using MATLAB, mostly.

 

[chroot]

Mathematica is actually much more powerful than Maple, but it really depends on what you intend to do with it. If you're just doing calculus, Maple's easier to work with.

- Warren

 

[Goalie_Ca]

As an engineer i use maple and MATLAB lots.
Maybe I'm a little biased because my school helps develop it with waterloo so it's unofficially taught but it's pretty nice and straight forward for calculus and linear algebra. I usually find that if I'm going to use mathematica i might as well use matlab.

The latest version of maple adds a ";" for you.

 

[JohnDubYa]

I have used both extensively, and I don't have a strong preference for one over the other.