Abstract :
This seems like as good a time as any to stop and catch our collective breaths during the ongoing reviews of Maple, Mathematica, and Matlab in this department. We understand and acknowledge that we aren\´t experts in any one of these three packages (let alone all three), but our inexperience gave us some initial objectivity and helps illustrate how experienced programmers new to these tools might realize certain implementations. We sent our near-final drafts to representatives at Maplesoft, Wolfram Research, and Mathworks--not to seek their approval, but to have them check for technical correctness. Some found explicit errors, but others objected to the quality levels of our implementation solutions. During the process of reading and responding to this feedback, we gained some new insights into these packages\´ "personalities." We want to share some of this dialogue with you, without additional comments, in the hopes that you, too, will find it instructive.
