Maple quirks vs MMA quirks

[monkeyboy]

Hello,

I'm somewhat familiar with Maple and use it mainly for grad school
related work, but I find it somewhat quirky and not intuitive. Would
MMA be about the same or is it more straight forward for engineering
type calculations?

Thank you.

[A N Niel]

In article
<d31efed6-f156-432d...@g10g2000pri.googlegroups.com>,
monkeyboy <fse...@lynx.neu.edu> wrote:

Which notation is less quirky ... sin(x) or Sin[x] ?

[Jon McLoone]

On Nov 6, 2:19 am, A N Niel <ann...@nym.alias.net.invalid> wrote:
> In article
> <d31efed6-f156-432d-a164-d2a6c4430...@g10g2000pri.googlegroups.com>,

>
> monkeyboy <fsen...@lynx.neu.edu> wrote:
> > Hello,
>
> > I'm somewhat familiar with Maple and use it mainly for grad school
> > related work, but I find it somewhat quirky and not intuitive. Would
> > MMA be about the same or is it more straight forward for engineering
> > type calculations?
>
> > Thank you.
>
> Which notation is less quirky ... sin(x) or Sin[x] ?

Since 1996 Mathematica has had a mode that you can set,
DefaultInputForm->TraditionalForm (currently in the Preferences
dialog), that allows you to use sin(x) as input. Indeed it goes a lot
further and allows you to use things like...
-1
tan (x)
or arctan(x) as alternatives to of ArcTan[x], and

T
m
as an alternative to Transpose[m]

Most people ignore this option, because once they understand the
notation, it is actually very useful to be able to avoid the
inconsistency/ambiguity of reading expressions such as t(r+1) and know
whether that t is multiplying like x(y+1) or a function like sin(r+1)

Jon McLoone