@pagan 

Both bugs are regressions starting from Maple 10.

In Maple 9.52:

asympt(RootOf(16*x^4-y^4-y^3-3*x^2+y+1,y),x,2);
                                   3        1
                     -2 x - 1/4 + ---- + O(----)
                                  64 x       2
                                            x

About understanding the mix of try..catch and lasterror, proper documentation would have helped. The code in M9.52 uses traperror and lasterror statements. It sounds like a traperror statement was replaced with a try..catch construct.

Another difference that I find remarkable is that the current solve statement in line 40 uses the option Explicit, producing a large complex expression, which may be harder to handle.

On the other hand, it seems that the Standard GUI's prettyprinting bug (at levels 2 or 3) affects names, while function calls print OK:

proc() try catch: f; end try; end proc;
                                 proc () try  catch:  end try end proc

proc() try catch: f(); end try; end proc;
                                 proc () try  catch: f() end try end proc

No such problem occurs in Maple 9.52 Standard GUI.

I think that rewriting sqrt in terms of a module is just part of the long term trend of modernization of the library. Such breaking of backward compatibility is good, and actually it has been too slow, in my opinion. The actual issue, I think, is that this change should be properly documented. E.g. in ?updates,Maple15,compatibility.

@Alec Mihailovs 

Carl Devore's actual phrase, that I think you refer to, and as  extracted from my archive, is:

RealDomain works by finding all the roots and then discarding the complex
ones.  It does not use a separate real algorithm.  That's why I would
never use RealDomain in the classroom.

@Alec Mihailovs 

Carl Devore's actual phrase, that I think you refer to, and as  extracted from my archive, is:

RealDomain works by finding all the roots and then discarding the complex
ones.  It does not use a separate real algorithm.  That's why I would
never use RealDomain in the classroom.

@Alec Mihailovs 

I was Maplesoft ambassador in Argentina from mid 1994 until some point in 1999-2000 (events then were very confusing!). Maple on the Web is around since April 1996. It had the combined purpose of 1. putting together  information from diverse sources and 2. aiding in my activity as ambassador (at that time, Maplesoft web site was very poor). Indeed, purpose 1. served both me and the rest of the community. In this sense, I would consider being a member of the community since then. 

Though theoretically my ambassador activities were restricted to Argentina, sometimes I pushed International Marketing to support some presentations in other countries of South America (actually I kept pushing them all those years...).

Certainly, since 1994 I was a systematic reader of diverse fora like MUG, sci.math.symbolic, etc, and learned a lot from people posting there (those you mention and several other ones). And I began posting "elsewhere" in 2001 (there yes a bit earlier than you). But it took me several years to become "ready" for an active participation in the open discussions. For this reason I have largely missed those good years.

About the "pre-Google" era, well, since the mid 90's there were already diverse powerful search engines that I have used a lot. The most famous one of that era was Altavista.

@Alec Mihailovs 

I was Maplesoft ambassador in Argentina from mid 1994 until some point in 1999-2000 (events then were very confusing!). Maple on the Web is around since April 1996. It had the combined purpose of 1. putting together  information from diverse sources and 2. aiding in my activity as ambassador (at that time, Maplesoft web site was very poor). Indeed, purpose 1. served both me and the rest of the community. In this sense, I would consider being a member of the community since then. 

Though theoretically my ambassador activities were restricted to Argentina, sometimes I pushed International Marketing to support some presentations in other countries of South America (actually I kept pushing them all those years...).

Certainly, since 1994 I was a systematic reader of diverse fora like MUG, sci.math.symbolic, etc, and learned a lot from people posting there (those you mention and several other ones). And I began posting "elsewhere" in 2001 (there yes a bit earlier than you). But it took me several years to become "ready" for an active participation in the open discussions. For this reason I have largely missed those good years.

About the "pre-Google" era, well, since the mid 90's there were already diverse powerful search engines that I have used a lot. The most famous one of that era was Altavista.

@Alec Mihailovs 

I have checked my archives of Carl Devore's Yahoo groups and I see that you have been participating actively already in 2002, while I have began my activity there in 2005.

@Alec Mihailovs 

I have checked my archives of Carl Devore's Yahoo groups and I see that you have been participating actively already in 2002, while I have began my activity there in 2005.

@Alec Mihailovs 

Thank you for the link. Trends in that picture are interesting. But evolution in longer time spans as in the table "Very Long Term History" may be even more relevant. In stocks metaphor, a CAS is a very long term investment (several decades).

About CAS programming languages themselves, it is within my expectations that they rate low. However, it was not so expected for me finding that Maple is on top of the CAS group. So, I have made a quick, rough check using the same query +"<language> programming" that TIOBE is using in a Google search. I have got these numbers:

Maple           53.500
Mathematica     34.700
Sage             3.010
Axiom            1.950
Maxima             949

Reduce          63.800

These are "bare" numbers, in the sense that false positives are not filtered out. Except for the case of Reduce (thus set apart), based on browsing some hits, it seems to me that a confidence factor of 80-90% may be fine. Hence, the order for the rest is not likely to be altered.

@Alec Mihailovs 

Indeed, in recent versions, part of the Maple system code is written in Java. I have not found yet published figures about the fraction written in C, in Java, etc. But it seems likely to me that the fraction written in Java is increasing along the versions.

Using the package Ore_algebra:

with(Ore_algebra):
A:=diff_algebra([Dt,t]):
sort(skew_product(Dt,t^2,A),[t,Dt]);
                                   2
                                  t  Dt + 2 t

The command sort is used here to force t^2 appear before Dt.

I think that the documentation of these two packages, DEtools and Ore_algebra, should be better integrated as they have an intersection on the subject of differential operators.

@PatrickT 

No, I did not know about them. Thank you for the links. If you were interested in popularization of mathematics in (argentinian) Spanish, you may look at the publications of  Adrian Paenza (blog, some videos).

@Alec Mihailovs 

The third argument x in the call to collect is interpreted as a function name:

collect(hh,v,x); 
type(%,function); 
                        x     2               x
                     x(v  (5 x  - 4 x + 3) + v )

                                 true

The Classic GUI is very useful here as it shows the x in the output in upright roman font, rather than italic.

@Alec Mihailovs 

In view of Laurent's blog About compatibility, I find such changes unlikely anytime soon.

@Alec Mihailovs 

In view of Laurent's blog About compatibility, I find such changes unlikely anytime soon.