The man was an astounding genius. His work will keep mathematicians busy for another 50 years, if not more. While I don't know how to relate much of his work to the ``applied sciences'', it is relatively easy to link Computer Algebra with many of the advances in Category Theory due to Grothendieck. For example, all the mathematics that a computer can do must be ``constructive'' in an appropriate sense. So the right universe to look at is in a Topos, where you are working in the inner language of the Topos. This is alrealy well-known to people doing Functional programming. Bart Jacob's book "Categorical Logic and Type Theory" talks about this. Another nice reference for these ideas is Barr and Wells' "Category Theory for Computing Science". My current favourites, for their applications to the theory of Computer Algebra that is, are Kripke, Carnap, Montague [for their work in logic], Joyal [Species] and Kolmogorov [for his work in complexity].

64bit Maple brings back fond memories... I remember having the machine 'beast.maplesoft.com' ('cause it was an amazing beast at the time - I believe it is now retired as too slow), a 64 bit Dec Alpha machine, in my living room during the winter of 1992, to do a ``proper'' port of Maple to that platform. Actually, while I was doing it, I did a full port of Maple (it was MapleV.R2 or R3 I believe) to the Acorn at the same time. Of course, porting Maple V R1 to Windows 3.0 as well as to the Data General Aviion and some Sequent machine had its challenges too!

The ?OpenMaple,Java,Algebraic page describes the methods (all?) of that class, but not the constructor! That is very non-Java-like. There are classes for a number of the Maple types (see the appendix for the advanced programming guide for a full listing), but not all of them. Are these simply not documented? Or is there no way to build those directly (which would be a real shame)? Actually, I know for a fact that the C API has hooks for building all Maple DAGs. Those do not seem to be documented either. A real shame that. The example on ?OpenMaple,Java,Procedure,execute made me laugh out loud! Having a class for a Maple procedure, and then having to build it using a string!?! Also, having an execute method on a procedure is rather un-Maple-like. It is not even good design for an interpreter! There should be a contructor for an application, and the Algebraic.eval() should be called. The idea of assigning into an EXPSEQ is also frightening. The only way to construct an EXPSEQ should be via its constructor. This is a poor OO design. Oh well, at least OpenMaple exists, so I should not complain too much ;-)

The ?OpenMaple,Java,Algebraic page describes the methods (all?) of that class, but not the constructor! That is very non-Java-like. There are classes for a number of the Maple types (see the appendix for the advanced programming guide for a full listing), but not all of them. Are these simply not documented? Or is there no way to build those directly (which would be a real shame)? Actually, I know for a fact that the C API has hooks for building all Maple DAGs. Those do not seem to be documented either. A real shame that. The example on ?OpenMaple,Java,Procedure,execute made me laugh out loud! Having a class for a Maple procedure, and then having to build it using a string!?! Also, having an execute method on a procedure is rather un-Maple-like. It is not even good design for an interpreter! There should be a contructor for an application, and the Algebraic.eval() should be called. The idea of assigning into an EXPSEQ is also frightening. The only way to construct an EXPSEQ should be via its constructor. This is a poor OO design. Oh well, at least OpenMaple exists, so I should not complain too much ;-)

If someone in the community would be so obliging as to providing me the source for a 'good' picture or representation of a Maple leaf I can use as the 'picture' for this Map, I would add it to the site. I would prefer to not use a corporate icon, as this is meant to be for/by the community -- but I will gladly accept submissions from Maplesoft-ites. This includes you folks in graphic design land whose favourite Maple-art didn't make it past the powers-that-be!

Might it be possible to 'fix' the link you give to be an actual link instead of the text of a URL? That would be even more convenient. Thanks.

The marketing advantage of being able to attach an ad to a competitor's words seems slight to me. The only case it could make a real difference is when you are relatively unknown trying to get into a market dominated by a giant. Since Maple/Mathematica do not have that market relationship, I would not have expected either company to resort to such tricks. My post was more about how surprised I was that when I did clearly maple-related searches, I got Wolfram hits at all.

It appears the links you give above have ``expired'' since you posted them.

That is how the DOS TTY version knew how to print "Maple Text" (which has survived to this day as a Copy option in the GUIs). Of course, these days none of the version of Maple know how to re-read that in properly, or print it nicely, but that's probably because few people even know what "Maple Text" is supposed to be anymore. Though I do know that the programmer who wrote that (wonderful) DOS TTY version is now back at Maplesoft. Maybe if users ask loudly enough, the TTY version can also be "backward compatible" and re-improve back to its 1991 glory days!

I know that Maple programs are supposed to continue to work from one version to another, an expected subset of ``backwards compatibility''. But what about GUI compatibility? In one version of Maple, I start it up, I type something, and I get an answer. In Maple 10, I have to fiddle with options to regain my compatibility - and I only knew which options they were because I am an expert Maple user. What about the average Maple user who starts Maple and doesn't have a clue how to get it to ``do what it used to''? Similarly, what about issues of GUI compatibility where it comes to typesetting quality? Do I seem to be the only one who thinks that the current typesetter is a serious backwards step in quality from Classic? The fonts are fuzzy, the parenthesis placement is frequently awful, the super- and sub-scripts are often too close to the base object, and so on. While having a zillion new symbols is nice, but if the display of the old symbols is degraded in quality, I prefer to work with the nicer (ie older) version. And that's just on the screen - printing a worksheet, especially on a Mac, produces some spectacularly amusing results. A well, at least it is comforting to know that Mathematica's typesetting is not better, no matter what their marketing claims. On the other hand, Scientific Workplace, or the free TeXmacs do produce some very very nice looking results.

In Maple 9.5 Classic (sorry, can't check 10 right now), if you do ?updates you get a help page with links to the updates for current versions of Maple, going back to Maple 7. No big deal, right? But if you look in the help browser window instead, you'll see links for the What's New going all the way back to Maple 4.0. For you youngsters out there, that is not Maple V R4, but genuine Maple 4.0, the one that was released in 1985. Have a gander through that blast from the past. If there is a demand, I believe I might still be able to dig up the What's New for Maple 3.3 and 3.2 as well, though I can't promise. I must admit I have very fond memories of the Windows GUI for Maple V R1 for some strange reason. Let's see if anyone remembers why ;-) More seriously though, if someone out there can find a (working) set of disks of Maple V Release 1 for Windows, I would like to buy it from them.

Would it be possible to post (or re-post) the above worksheet in a Maple 9.5 compatible manner? Right now that worksheet, when opened with Maple 9.5 shows only the sections and subsection headings and nothing else! You are excluding 48% of the audience [according to the poll] of this forum by posting a worksheet that only works in Maple 10. That is works best in Maple 10, that's expected; that it is useless in previous versions is disappointing - what you've posted there looks fascinating!

I learned Calculus in first year university using that book. It was an absolute delight. I still have that book on my shelf, and pull it out not infrequently. That being said, I was intending to (and did) study pure mathematics, and this class was only offered to the top 80 students of the incoming 800 students in the Faculty.

Could it be that there are in fact two sets of uneval quotes, not one, used? I ask this because in the Standard GUI, '(a=b) + (b=a)' evaluates to a+b = a+b while ''(a=b) + (b=a)'' evaluates to '(a=b) + (b=a)'. In MaplePrime, (a=b) + (b=a) prints as (a=b) + (b=a), which is why I ask.