@longrob - nice post by the way, and thanks for the links and info you could provide.  If I could afford the time I too would likely enjoy this course.

@Alec - I see your point.  It's more a matter of teaching preference.  Also I think a company could get into trouble if they started giving out too many complimentary copies for their budget to handle.  Maple's budget isn't as large as Mathematicas.  But I suppose it's also a way to familiarize people with your products and to get more users regardless of wether it's better or not.  Luckily for Mathematica they have a huge follower base and can afford the complimentary copies.  Matlab has a huge user base as well, but I'm not sure if they provide complimentaries.  Also, it would be interesting to find out what percentage of the population uses which of the 3 M's most of the time.  I don't have Mathematica but I have Matlab, however, I rarely if ever use it.  I use Maple 12 a LOT, and a few times I wish I had the performance boost or increased functionality of the newer versions.  I sometimes have access to newer versions but I do most of my work in Maple 12 (it has worked well for me) and so far, my plan is to upgrade next year.  Cheers to Maple for continued improvements and success. 

Sorry to digress a little but thanks again for the info on the open course. 

@Alec ... Not meaning to sound offensive ... but you sound as if Maple in the Uk were passe or a thing of the past.  "It is interesting to note that some of UK schools still use Maple." 

The U.S. is very Matlab, Mathematica biased.  Many people there haven't even heard of Maple let alone Canada or even that Canadians don't actually live in igloos haha. 

It is unfortunate that more universities don't adopt the Maple platform.  I suppose it's up to us the user to show what Maple can do better.

@longrob, good to hear it's okay for you.  The only site I ever notice a slowdown is mapleprimes so couldn't be internet congestion.

I took the liberty to do a little analysis - nothing else is loading just mapleprimes.  I used my connection status to guage my results.

1st hook up to internet - connected at 31.2 kbps loads to weather site - wait for all clear no more loading and start to page  www.mapleprimes.com/recent/all

Initial start time  1:10 (1 min 10 seconds after connect)  Initial activity bytes recieved  144890

 elapsed time  bytes recieved
    @1:47           144890         - screen goes empty
    @2:14           310000         - first signs maple page is loading background goes blue
   @3:12           594000          - first signs of mapleprimes logo
   @3:54           901973         - all questions are visible   
  @4:22            still loading    - page says done - can scroll
  @4:50           1098540        - all page loading activity has stopped

So as you can see my frustration waiting for the site to load up.  After waiting for roughly 3 minutes (that's an eternity waiting for a website without images by the way) the bbc website loads faster than this for me. 

After it has finished loading if I am still connected to the internet and later return to mapleprimes it is a bit faster

@25:00     3428200    - initial start after surfing a little and returning to mapleprimes.com/recent/all
@25:51     3664405   - mapleprimes website ready to go

So you can see the second loading of the webpage I only have to wait almost a minute and it loads roughly only 24000 bytes as opposed to almost 1 Mb! 

At one point it was faster than this.  Even original mapleprimes 1 was 10 x's quicker than this.  I hope my results can initiate some further investigations in to why mapleprimes isn't as quick as it could be. 

@longrob, good to hear it's okay for you.  The only site I ever notice a slowdown is mapleprimes so couldn't be internet congestion.

I took the liberty to do a little analysis - nothing else is loading just mapleprimes.  I used my connection status to guage my results.

1st hook up to internet - connected at 31.2 kbps loads to weather site - wait for all clear no more loading and start to page  www.mapleprimes.com/recent/all

Initial start time  1:10 (1 min 10 seconds after connect)  Initial activity bytes recieved  144890

 elapsed time  bytes recieved
    @1:47           144890         - screen goes empty
    @2:14           310000         - first signs maple page is loading background goes blue
   @3:12           594000          - first signs of mapleprimes logo
   @3:54           901973         - all questions are visible   
  @4:22            still loading    - page says done - can scroll
  @4:50           1098540        - all page loading activity has stopped

So as you can see my frustration waiting for the site to load up.  After waiting for roughly 3 minutes (that's an eternity waiting for a website without images by the way) the bbc website loads faster than this for me. 

After it has finished loading if I am still connected to the internet and later return to mapleprimes it is a bit faster

@25:00     3428200    - initial start after surfing a little and returning to mapleprimes.com/recent/all
@25:51     3664405   - mapleprimes website ready to go

So you can see the second loading of the webpage I only have to wait almost a minute and it loads roughly only 24000 bytes as opposed to almost 1 Mb! 

At one point it was faster than this.  Even original mapleprimes 1 was 10 x's quicker than this.  I hope my results can initiate some further investigations in to why mapleprimes isn't as quick as it could be. 

On the contrary, the loss of your contributions are also a great loss to the community. 

No, the person I was specifically referring to, was not you.  It is unfortunately a great loss to the community.

The uniqueness of the old primes made it interesting and easy to navigate.  The idea to reduce the sub directories of subdirectories to one flatlist I think went against what a lot of people wanted.  I also agree that given the problems the old site had, it was better.  Although I find the recent behind the scenes modifications to this site encouraging to say the least.  It's a bit faster, now if we can just modify the formatting of the site and bring back the subdirectories .. we could almost relive the good times :)

@acer Yes, I was trying to get it to work typing letter for letter.  Unfortunately no it does not work.

I almost wonder why we can't have d^2/dx^2 or higher derivative options in the palette?  As in my latest question regarging the modification of palettes it would be nice to be able to insert custom functions in the palette for later use.

@acer Yes, I was trying to get it to work typing letter for letter.  Unfortunately no it does not work.

I almost wonder why we can't have d^2/dx^2 or higher derivative options in the palette?  As in my latest question regarging the modification of palettes it would be nice to be able to insert custom functions in the palette for later use.

Thanks, yes I knew about the prime notation.

Thanks, yes I knew about the prime notation.

Okay, thanks that's where I was going wrong.  I was putting it in the numerator. 

And for the expression pallete, I thought there would exist a pre-made 2nd derivative which I couldn't find. 

Okay, thanks that's where I was going wrong.  I was putting it in the numerator. 

And for the expression pallete, I thought there would exist a pre-made 2nd derivative which I couldn't find. 

I present here another way using ParseTime

newdaytoday := proc (d1, m1, y1, d2, m2, y2)
  local i, j, k, a, startinterval, endinterval, datelisting;  
  uses StringTools:
  a := []:
  for k from y1 to y2 do
    for j from 1 to 12 do
      for i from 1 to 31 do
        if ParseTime("%Y-%m-%d", cat(k, "-", j, "-", i)):-weekDay = -1 then break: end if:
        a := [op(a), cat("", ParseTime("%Y-%m-%d", cat(k, "-", j, "-", i)):-monthDay, "/", ParseTime("%Y-%m-%d", cat(k, "-", j, "-", i)):-month, "/", ParseTime("%Y-%m-%d", cat(k, "-", j, "-", i)):-year)]:
      end do:
    end do:
  end do:
startinterval := ParseTime("%Y-%m-%d", cat(y1, "-", m1, "-", d1)):-yearDay:
endinterval := ParseTime("%Y-%m-%d", cat(y2, "-12-31")):-yearDay - ParseTime("%Y-%m-%d", cat(y2, "-", m2, "-", d2)):-yearDay+1:
datelisting := a[startinterval .. -endinterval];
end proc:

I apologize if there were any errors when I copied the contents to Notepad then fixed formatting and copied here.  The download link is also provided.

second_dateprojec.mw

**edit** This code here is, however, about 13x's slower than the original code using just basic functions.  All the extra ParseTime calls here to the StringTools package increases our process time.  Also I just realized I switched the output of days and months as compared to the original ordering (that can be easily changed by the user)

@pagan I forgot to mention for versions prior to Maple15.

I see also Maple 15 Finance package suffers from the same original excel limitations and seems to follow a new 1901 date system.

Even excel couldn't deal with dates prior to 1900.  Only until an extended date add on package was provided did it overcome it's deficiencies.

Isn't the sequential nature of your prefered logic the basis for what I have done?  A Maple solution to Excels logic would be most helpful.