I just finished uploading the latest release, 5.47.0, of our beautiful Maxima project.
It was a harder battle than I anticipated, lots of little build issues I had to fix before it was ready to go.
Maxima remains one of the three major computer algebra systems. Perhaps a bit (but only a bit!) less elegant-looking than Mathematica, and perhaps a bit (but only a bit!) less capable on some friends (exotic integrals, differential equations) than Maple, yet significantly more capable on other fronts (especially I believe abstract index tensor algebra and calculus), it also has a unique property: it’s free and open source.
It is also one of the oldest pieces of major software that remains in continuous use. Its roots go back to the 1960s. I occasionally edit 50-year old code in its LISP code base.
And it works. I use it every day. It is “finger memory”, my “go to” calculator, and of course there’s that tensor algebra bit.
Maxima also has a beautiful graphical interface, which I admit I don’t use much though. You might say that I am “old school” given my preference for the text UI, but that’s really not it: the main reason is that once you know what you’re doing, the text UI is simply more efficient.
I hope folks will welcome this latest release.