[CullingTheHerd]

I should have said: "And yet Mathematica is <sometimes> not nearly as effective as math when done by pencil, paper, and a trained mathematician."

I wasn't meaning to imply that Mathematica has no value or has little value. It's indeed awesome both productivity wise and for just enjoying the exercise of doing math.

I was trying, and doing a poor job, to give reasons why pencil and paper has value. Not to the exclusion of Mathematica or more so than Mathematica. Just, that it still has tons of value. And that, maybe that is what these open source projects are trying to recreate that Mathematica has not yet captured.

[dekhn]

I personally do enjoy sometimes doing written math. I manually matrix-multiplied the three axis rotation functions (see the three one-axis rotation functions, and the result of multiplying them) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotation_formalisms_in_three_d...) But of course these days I just let the computer do rotations for me.

I think the interesting product idea here would be something I've never seen: a canvas on a tablet that acts like pencil and paper (drawing) but also "helps" by recognizing what you write, converting it to a formal language, and validating/verifying it. sort of the mathematica notebook, but more like a notepad