When comparing SageMath vs Wolfram Mathematica, the Slant community recommends SageMath for most people. In the question“What are the best computer algebra systems?” SageMath is ranked 2nd while Wolfram Mathematica is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose SageMath is:
Jupyter Notebook supports Sagemath Kernel.
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Pros
Pro Free open-source software. Compares favorably to Mathematica. INCLUDES Maxima in distro. Web-based CoCalc is excellent app based on Sagemath.
Jupyter Notebook supports Sagemath Kernel.
Pro Versatile
Though SageMath depends on other software packages for the heavy lifting, SageMath offers a centralized interface for working with many subfields of mathematics.
Pro Lots of functionality
Pro Built-in CPU Parallelization
Pro Very mature
Wolfram Mathematica has been around for a long time without any major changes in the basic design.
Pro Coherent API over different domains
Pro Supports units and can do much more than just maths
Other platforms severely lack this useful feature.
Pro Fully integrated symbolic processing
Pro Very powerful and fast, also possible to get for free
Cons
Con Incoherent design
Con Poor documentation
Con Bloated
SageMath does not do much mathematics by itself. Instead, it depends on many CAS and non-CAS software packages, which it calls based on the desired operations. Installing SageMath pulls in all those packages as mandatory prerequisites. There is no lightweight GUI either.
Con Unintuitive data types and strange assignment statements
Representation of data still remains highly fragmented technically and one fumbles between data types and stumbles on strange assignment statements to attempt conversions of meaning.
Con Proprietary
