Maple, Mathematica, and Matlab: the 3M´s without the tape

To begin this new series of Technology Reviews, the authors explore the three preeminent productivity tools for scientific and engineering computation. The forthcoming series will compare the tools in areas they overlap and contrast their scopes in areas where they extend beyond one another. The authors plan to particularly examine how they support three different categories of professional tasks, spanning the range of our readers´ work: undergraduate education, scientific and engineering computation, and technical communication and publication.