Oh yes, i understand. One tool rarely does it all. I always
wanted a copy of Mathmatica, so I'm a tad bit envious.
I remember the kids who were doing higher math in 1990/1991
using Mathematica and it seemed like SUCH a powerful program
compared to anything else I saw before.
I worked in the computer lab, and I had to help tweak the
computers so the kids (I say kids - they were "older" to me then
- 19, 20, 21) and professors that used it could use it at its
maximum efficiency.
But I was taking child psychology, pascal programming, and other
courses having little to do with mathematics.
But I'd see them with their fancy formulas and think, "Man, I
should be using the sink, not improving the plumbing".
Man, 25 years ago. Yow. I don't even know when Mathmatica came
out honestly. It must be ancient - I don't *think* Excel even
existed back then. It was Lotus 1 2 3 and.. hm.. Quattro Pro.
Wait - the Macs had Excel. Yeah, I played with it on the Macs.
Had other friends doing AI, but I DID get to play around with
Fractals. My downloaded copy of Fractint was worn out; I'd beat
up my poor computer trying to make it do more and more difficult
fractals, probably my frustrated response to the students that
understand the higher math scribbles that I didn't.
But I got to make prettier pictures and see recursive math in
beautiful 16 and then 256 color when THEY were graphing in
boring black and white. So, I had some vindication tongue
emoticon
I was also able to write a Turbo Pascal program to graph my
friend's neural network, complete with all the weightings in 16
colors, and got it printed on one of the few Bubblejet printers
that were available.
He told me he amazed the professor, so he took me to lunch as a
thank you.
