Review of Maplets

Maplets are a new front-end to Maple, an alternative to the Worksheet front-end. (They require Maple 7. They also require the Maplets package - a Maple 7 package - which was developed after Maple 7 was released. See www.maplesoft.com for distribution details.) For some users, learning Maple syntax is a chore, and may distract from the task at hand. This can certainly apply to some first year undergraduates: for example, those for whom mathematics is a service course and who are unlikely to make extensive use of manipulative mathematics in their later courses or careers. (As software development does cost money, it is probably worth mentioning that there may well be other paying customers with similar desires to avoid learning computer language syntax. These people - some engineers and other professionals - may be proficient in other computer packages but may have an occasional need to do some standardised calculation where Maple is at its core. It may be more efficient for such engineers, etc. just to do the job in a pre-prepared Maplet, rather than suffer the distraction of yet another syntax to learn.)…