[Retric]

People complained just as hard when transitioning from slide rules to calculators and they have some valid points, but the net gains where also clear. It's easy to make a bad interface but there are plenty of great Math interfaces that keep a listing of all previous steps above what your working on both how you enter it and show you how things would look like on a blackboard. There are a also plenty upsides like the ability to cut and paste lines so you can avoid a lot of stupid mistakes like dropping signs. But, far more important from and educational perspective is a students improved comfort using a computer to do advanced math vs. the near phobia that you and many others apparently have.

[mechanical_fish]

Oh, it's not a phobia. Just skepticism. ;)

I don't doubt that one can, and that we will, build a computer system for manipulating higher mathematics that's so much better than a stack of paper, a pencil, and a decent eraser that you won't even own the paper. What I doubt is that it's done yet. But I haven't exactly been looking for it, so maybe I'm wrong. Certainly, once it's done there won't be any problem selling it to me (except for the sad fact that I no longer manipulate equations on an everyday basis).