Igor,

>>>What is Mathematica?

>>Its a "programming language" that deals heavily with math and calculus.
>>I've only had short encounters without, but it looks pretty interesting.
>>http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/

> Is this Fortran of the 21st centure?

Mathematica has been around for 14 years... It's a very useful tool to own if you are an engineer or a statistician, or if you ever want to test your own heuristics.

It's still pricey (~2K) but it's far cheaper than the Unix-based Maxima program that I was using in the mid-80s (50K+).

BTW. What's wrong with Fortran? Certainly not my tool of choice for GUI stuff but usually a good choice if you ever want to do ratemaking calculations for an insurance company (although I still prefer APL to do exploratory calculations).

Daniel