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Wolfram Mathematica vs Standard Maple vs Maple Flow vs Mathcad vs Matlab

Posted 1 year ago

Hello,

I have at least some questions that I would like to address to you:

  1. What would be the advantages of using Wolfram Mathematica compared to the following software: Standard Maple, Maple Flow, Mathcad, or Matlab?

  2. What would be the disadvantages of using Wolfram Mathematica compared to the following software: Standard Maple, Maple Flow, Mathcad, and Matlab?

  3. Why do you prefer Wolfram Mathematica instead of the other software: Standard Maple, Maple Flow, Mathcad, or Matlab?

  4. Or do you use the other software listed above besides Wolfram Mathematica?

  5. Is it really better to use Wolfram Mathematica compared to the other software above, at least from the point of view of say the following fields: Engineering/Electrical Engineering, Control Systems, Signal Processing, Calculus, Matrices, Algorithm (convergence, accuracy, precision), working with units, programming?

  6. Is it worth messing around with Wolfram Mathematica to learn this software, or would it be better if you turned to one of the other software above?

Thank you.

POSTED BY: Cornel B.
Posted 1 year ago

There are many who can answer this question better than I. Your questions cover very broad ranges of use for technical software, so many will have different opinions based on expertise of the software and the depth to which it's used in a given field. But I have a little experience in venturing off the Wolfram path and onto other mathematics software for reasons of my own.

I first used Mathcad during college (chemical engineering) in the early 90's. Loved it. Like MS Excel, it worked well with mass and energy balances for multiple process streams across a simulated chemical plant. But it was more fun to use, and it could handle units. For its day, it was an impressive tool.

Then PTC bought out Mathsoft and began to develop Mathcad Prime. I was a test user for Prime v2. At that time, it was missing some of the functionality from the original Mathcad. Aesthetically, it was a step in the right direction, though some hardcore Mathcad fans had become very frustrated with it. They are still developing Prime and it's probably much better than when I tested it. I had tested it more as a hobbyist than as a commercial user. At that time in my career, I was more interested in DOE and process modeling/optimization than in mass and energy balances. I did not develop any programs with its programming capabilities. But I did generate worksheets for wastewater processing that I could reuse over and again. PTC retains libraries of worksheets for various engineering design calculations. But these are an added cost. And, unlike Wolfram, PTC does not have a perpetual license model. And, also unlike Wolfram, there is no personal user license for someone who just wants to start learning the software at home so they can improve their skills. You have to pay for the professional annual license subscription. Not cool!

I also tried Maple on the OS/2 platform during college but didn't use it extensively. More recently, I bought a personal license for Maple 2021 with the intent to compare how it has kept pace with Mathematica. By that time, over the years, I had increased my knowledge and comfort level with Mathematica that I had trouble really getting started with Maple. I recently tried doing problems from a calculus textbook to get familiar with the software. I struggled to successfully use the help documentation which I find is not as detailed and organized as that of Mathematica.

Maple is supposed to be a platform where you can immediately get started with analyzing data, solving equations, or even developing programs. Their context help is key to helping you get started. But at this point, I was too far invested into my Mathematica journey. The user base, in my experience, is the smallest of the four major mathematics software platforms out there. I think that marketing over the years, or lack thereof, has played a huge role in Maple’s current state of acceptance. People just don’t know it’s out there. The company is obviously not a large as any of the others and probably does not have the resources to push their platform in all of the latest areas of technical computation. But what they do, I think they do well. I hope they never go away.

I used Matlab one semester during college just because I loved trying new things. Mathematica still kept my interest, and eventually abandoned Matlab. It’s definitely seems the go-to tool for most engineers. It has a shorter learning curve because the syntax is similar to a variety of other procedural-based programming languages that engineers pick up in college. I know that it currently has a very large user base with many user-shared resources and applications available. It has a lower initial cost than Mathematica for the base platform. But you’ll soon be paying for additional libraries for added functionality (like partial differential equations) that are already a part of Mathematica.

Mathematica requires a lot of groundwork (and patience) upfront. It is, and always was, a programmer's environment. But it pays you back in more ways than you can anticipate. You won't regret the time spent when you one day suddenly find yourself doing powerful text file parsing tasks very quickly or handling lists of any kind of data with consistency.

I've had years of touch and go with Mathematica--my career didn't always let me use it. I first used it (version 2.1 for DOS) with a numerical methods course in chemical engineering. I kept a student license through college, used it in grad school, and then converted it to a professional license after graduation (version 4). After falling into disuse (because of my career and lack of software options at work), I didn't pick it up again until version 7, when the Home licenses, I think, were initially offered. Then, I took advantage of an offer to upgrade my professional license, and I've maintained that since.

I was always interested in Mathematica because the overall cohesiveness and consistency of the language and the incredible potential that always lay before it. When Wolfram launched WolframAlpha, that was a markedly new phase for Mathematica into Data Science and user friendliness. So much has changed to the product since then. It is just so fun to use. (It always has been for me.) And when the Manipulate function first appeared in Mathematica, it was a game changer.

I've long gotten over the steep learning curve, a long-held criticism which, in my opinion, doesn't apply quite so much anymore. The help documentation has become the best I have ever seen. And the free online courses are indispensable--especially An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language. Start there. That course will take you from zero to high degree of user confidence. I am no expert despite having been with it since v. 2.1. I am like many others who graduated from Beginner and are now in the long, long phase of Intermediate User. That's because there is so much it can do and so many different computational areas (math, science, engineering, music, internet, machine learning, finance, history, data science, hardware connectivity, etc.) into which one can delve. Some areas are obviously more advanced than others.

You ask about Maple Flow. It sounds interesting. It sounds like a competitive bid to engage Mathcad users, and that's fine. While Mathematica does not work like Mathcad, it does not try to. I'll take the breadth and depth of its features and functionality over anything else any day. Time and again, nothing out there matches the coherent language structure nor offers the scope of data computation like Mathematica.

To directly answer your questions:

  1. One advantage of Mathematica is that covers a much wider variety of data types and with much greater consistency than the other platforms. Once you master the foundational topics of the language, you can quickly cover ground in familiar and newer fields of science and engineering than you can with the others. (And I haven’t even mentioned the Wolfram Data Repository.) Also, becoming adept at Mathematica will help you to think more systematically about problem-solving. That’s true for any language, but there are more styles/methods available in the Wolfram Language at your disposal.
  2. The steeper learning curve is still there. But it’s so much easier if you start with the online course An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language. It will take a lot of your time, especially if you’re new to Mathematica. But the time spent here will launch you far.
  3. From the beginning, I saw the underlying structure and consistency of Mathematica. That kind of order just appeals to me. As I followed the product over the years, even when I was not actively using it, I was impressed by the frequently demonstrated vision and goals for the language, which was eventually given a name—Wolfram. It seemed to lag behind Matlab in user acceptance during the late 90s through 2000s—at least among engineers. But it seemed to turn a monumental corner in 2009. Wolfram technology was taking off in a big way. The outreach to new users was evident by the emphasis on better help documentation. The launch of WolframAlpha and Mathematica’s new ability to take advantage of it was also big, but admittedly, I didn’t quite understand that at the time. Mathematica wasn’t just remaining a mathematics and statistics software platform anymore. It kept up its pace of improving mathematics and statistics calculations, but it began to branch out in so many other ways—all while keeping the language consistent. But Stephen Wolfram can tell you all that and more better than I can.
  4. See the short book I wrote above.
  5. Everyone has an opinion here. Is electrical engineering your field? Yes, Mathematica can do calculus, matrix operations, work with units, and programming. I don’t have any experience with signal processing or control systems. I don’t know what you mean by “algorithm”. Yes, Mathematica seems to have more precision than any other software. Accuracy? Convergence? I presume so. These seem like numerical method questions. But those are specific enough for me. Generally, yes. Mathematica can do that.
  6. Mathematica is very much worth it. But that’s just my opinion. I’m not an electrical engineer. But I would still use Mathematica even if I were.

Holy cow, I wrote way more than I expected to...

POSTED BY: Glen Deering
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