Re: PTC Mathcad Prime Roadmap (2021 update)

VladimirN · ‎Jul 15, 2021

New features for consideration:

LucMeekes · ‎Jul 15, 2021

Considering that these features are 'considered', I don't expect any of these Prime releases will sufficiently outperform (real) MathCad; so I'll stick with (real) MathCad 11, the one that predates Prime 11 by 20 years, if not more, because I don't expect that Prime 11 gets released before 2023...

Luc

DM_9992412 · ‎Jul 19, 2021

I just keep thinking about what would have happened if PTC had spent their effort continuing on mathcad 16 instead of going towards Prime, which was a useless effort ... What a bad decision from some managers at PTC !

Werner_E · ‎Jul 19, 2021

@DM_9992412 wrote:

I just keep thinking about what would have happened if PTC had spent their effort continuing on mathcad 16 instead of going towards Prime, which was a useless effort ... What a bad decision from some managers at PTC !

The idea of giving the outdated Mathcad a new, more up-to-date code base was right and necessary. Just how PTC then implemented this idea is a disaster and ultimately killed Mathcad as we knew and loved it. Admittedly - sometimes a love-hate relationship, too, but you often appreciate things most when you've lost them.

RIP Mathcad

Cornel · ‎Jul 19, 2021

Well, what to do then?
We can complain as much as we want, but not much will change 🤔.
The PTC will most likely implement their development plans, it doesn't really matter what our wish is.

The solution is to give up and start with other math software? Or?

Probably some have been using Mathcad for many years...and are related to this software.

Werner_E · ‎Jul 19, 2021

We can complain as much as we want, but not much will change 🤔.

Yes, thats sure true!

The solution is to give up and start with other math software?

Sure, of course! What else?

Probably some have been using Mathcad for many years...and are related to this software.

Absolutely correct! There is no 1:1 replacement. And finding a new software and get aquainted to it sure will not be an easy task and as I guess will turn into a heavy trial and error task. Changes are very often painful, but they can also be liberating.

Cornel · ‎Jul 19, 2021

@LucMeekes
It's hard for me to break up definitively with Mathcad for good ...
Well, what software did you decide to emigrate to?

LucMeekes · ‎Jul 19, 2021

Didn't migrate to other software. Still using MathCad 11 for day-to-day work. Use Prime (Express), primarily to help others in this forum.

Luc

JohnRudnicki · ‎Jul 20, 2021

Me neither. Still using MC 14 for most things, but starting to do some stuff with MatLab.

tietjee · ‎Jul 19, 2021

Is there a schedule for the release dates?

VladimirN · ‎Jul 20, 2021

Not yet.

VladimirN · ‎Aug 03, 2021

Timeline release:

StuartBruff · ‎Aug 14, 2021

So, looking at the timeline of features being considered for Primes 8, 9, 10 & 11, Prime will achieve functional parity with Mathcad 15 in about 2024/2025. That's 13/14 years since the release of Prime 1.

I'd been hoping that Prime would have built on Mathcad 15, adding many new features, sorting out M15's discrepancies and making some of M15's good ideas more "professional" and better integrated (animation is one example ... that should be programmable from within a worksheet).

I hope that PTC's Mathcad team manage to sort out a few of the annoying features in Prime. Examples are restoring recursion for local functions (that's a biggie!! I'd like mutual recursion as well, please), restoring partial application (I sorely miss that) and sorting out the discrepancy between the symbolic and numeric processors whereby the symbolic processor won't handle "for x ∈ array".

Stuart

tietjee · ‎Jul 20, 2021

Do you believe their schedule?

DJNewman · ‎Jul 21, 2021

Since our official public product calendar doesn't have a date for the next version of Mathcad, there's nothing to believe or disbelieve right now.

I manage the Creo and PTC Mathcad YouTube channels for PTC, as well as all PTC Mathcad marketing in general.

tietjee · ‎Jul 21, 2021

PTC has never met a release date yet. Why should this be any different?

Werner_E · ‎Jul 21, 2021

@tietjee wrote:

PTC has never met a release date yet. Why should this be any different?

You are absolutely right, but I guess what DJNewman meant was, that PTC learned from this and found a clever way to never miss a published release date ever: They simply don't publish release dates for future version any more 😉

kfalkenberg · ‎Jul 29, 2021

Ok - We got enough.

We went to Maple. It has it's own diffculties but I don't feel like being taken for a ride by them...
Get lucky with PTC..

Klaus

StuartBruff · ‎Jul 29, 2021

@kfalkenberg wrote:

Ok - We got enough.

We went to Maple. It has it's own diffculties but I don't feel like being taken for a ride by them...

Standard Maple or Flow?

Stuart

kfalkenberg · ‎Aug 10, 2021

Both, if you buy flow, you get standard too.
Flow is good for quick scribbles, if you want to go deeper, you need the standard-application.
The service is good, I asked some stupid questions and got good answers.

regards,

Klaus

StuartBruff · ‎Aug 14, 2021

Yes, I've reached the same conclusion from my brief play with Flow, Klaus. It reminds me of an early Prime, but has a much more capable engine underneath the hood.

However, if Maple devote some resources to Flow, they've got the making of a decent product. I'm sure PTC are taking note ...

Stuart

ValeryOchkov · ‎Aug 17, 2021

One man was very sorry for his dog and cut off its tail not once, but gradually, in pieces.
And another person began to gradually sew these pieces back to the dog. The name of this dog is Mathcad Prime.

StuartBruff · ‎Aug 17, 2021

What we had:

What we've got:

"What do you mean you want to do image processing and see live results in a worksheet? Not over my warm, furry, body you won't! Local recursion and partial application??? Empty arrays??? Grrrr ..."

What we want:

Multi-Role, Multi-Environment, Adaptable, Intelligent.

(Great dogs, BTW)

I hope that Road Map successfully leads to a German Shorthaired Pointer of a product (and speeds up getting there).

Stuart

Werner_E · ‎Aug 18, 2021

@StuartBruff wrote:

What we want:

Given from the pic a dog with an even shorter tail!? 😈

I hope that Road Map successfully leads to a German Shorthaired Pointer of a product (and speeds up getting there).

I admire your unbroken optimism, but I am already wondering what it is based on.

StuartBruff · ‎Aug 18, 2021

@Werner_E wrote:

@StuartBruff wrote:

What we want:

Given from the pic a dog with an even shorter tail!? 😈

Fortunately, tail docking is no longer recommended practice (although, having owned a couple of docked GSPs, I have to say they look odd with tails) ...

So, there is still hope that the Prime dog will be able to happily knock ornaments off tables when it wags it tail. 😎

I hope that Road Map successfully leads to a German Shorthaired Pointer of a product (and speeds up getting there).

I admire your unbroken optimism, but I am already wondering what it is based on.

Based on? I know it's slight, but if they're putting effort into the symbolic processor, it might mean that they have more mathematically-inclined paying customers, who will have greater expectations of a maths application and, in particular, be more functionally minded.

Who knows we may even see the standard mathematical piecewise(*) braces introduced to avoid cumbersome looking, vertical-space consuming, awkward-to-interpret if statements and "functions"?

Stuart

Note:

(*) I've previously defined my own piecewise function in Mathcad, but it lacked inherent support for such things as short-circuiting unnecessary evaluation and allowing an arbitrary number of arguments in a user-defined function.

There's even been a recent request for help implementing one:

https://community.ptc.com/t5/PTC-Mathcad/Programming-Newbie-need-some-help/m-p/741298#M196764

It's not like some of Prime's competitors don't have it ...

https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Piecewise.html

https://www.maplesoft.com/support/help/maple/view.aspx?path=examples/piecewise

https://uk.mathworks.com/help/symbolic/piecewise.html

https://docs.sympy.org/latest/modules/functions/elementary.html?highlight=piecewise#sympy.functions.elementary.piecewise.Piecewise

https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/functions/sage/functions/piecewise.html

Werner_E · ‎Aug 18, 2021

I only asked because, in my opinion, the "development" of Prime over the past dozen years has left little hope of future improvement and there are no indications that PTC will continue to develop the program more seriously in the future.

kfalkenberg · ‎Aug 18, 2021

Why should they ? As long as the subscription fees come in, there is no need to do something...
So there is only one way to push them. For us it was time to change. ( with some 20 licences )

StuartBruff · ‎Aug 18, 2021

@kfalkenberg wrote:

Why should they ? As long as the subscription fees come in, there is no need to do something...
So there is only one way to push them. For us it was time to change. ( with some 20 licences )

Perhaps they ought to be looking at a few things (and I'm sure they have - it's just that I might not like/agree with their conclusions😞

Why are people turning away from Mathcad Prime?
Why aren't people *wanting* to keep up with subscriptions, instead of being content to keep to their old permanent licences?
Why aren't new people buying Mathcad Prime instead of its competitors?
What should Mathcad be doing to retain/gain/regain customers for Prime?

For some of these, the answers might not be as negative as I think they are - I have no actual figures to support some of my underlying assumptions, I'm just guessing from the number of questions, videos, blogs, coding sites (*), etc re Mathcad compared to Matlab, Maple & Mathematica, and how quiet the Community is compared to its predecessor, the Mathsoft Collaboratory - plus, of course, the fact that these competitors are still in business, Matlab, in particular, had a very strong footprint in industry when I worked in the aerospace environment.

Stuart

(*) For example,

Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS), https://oeis.org/
Project Euler, https://projecteuler.net/
Rosetta Code, http://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code (http://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Mathcad - I added the entry, but I think it might be the kind of thing that PTC might like to have somebody tackle.

StuartBruff · ‎Aug 18, 2021

@Werner_E wrote:

I only asked because, in my opinion, the "development" of Prime over the past dozen years has left little hope of future improvement and there are no indications that PTC will continue to develop the program more seriously in the future.

I'm not entirely sure that's the case. There seems to have been a little more indication of Prime being given more importance and greater attempts being made to entice people to the dark side. For example, they have upped support and development of the symbolic processor with their own in-house team, and the roadmap does show many of the M15-parity features users have been asking for. I've also seen slightly greater web-presence, including on YouTube. If I were a guessing man, I'd guess that they've resolved most of whatever drivers were keeping the Mathcad team from seriously updating the UI and direct user features. Either that or somebody up the food chain has finally heard the screams of anguish from down below or taken note of the competition.

However, I am dismayed that the team seem to be going for an updated Mathcad 15 rather than improving it. I think many have forgotten the constant stream of significant functional improvements many of us were asking for in Mathcads 11..14 (indeed, I was hoping Mathcad 18 would have been a significant player in the maths app world, playing on the same field as Mathematica, Maple and Matlab), and I'm not really seeing any signs those concerns are being taken on board - I have a sneaking suspicion that somebod-y/ies influential doesn't really grasp how far software has progressed since Fortran and C and isn't really au fait with the functional programming style that's been present in Mathcad since its early days.

Stuart

https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+mathcad&rlz=1C5CHFA_enGB860GB860&sxsrf=ALeKk03atfnUW9tIiQdgOvPOFfcarAT3uA:1629299995600&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:y&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwihjeG777ryAhUpRUEAHU3MAfwQpwV6BAgBECs&biw=1270&bih=656

StuartBruff · ‎Aug 18, 2021

@StuartBruff wrote:

@Werner_E wrote:

@StuartBruff wrote:

What we want:

Given from the pic a dog with an even shorter tail!? 😈

Fortunately, tail docking is no longer recommended practice (although, having owned a couple of docked GSPs, I have to say they look odd with tails) ...

So, there is still hope that the Prime dog will be able to happily knock ornaments off tables when it wags it tail. 😎

Oh, and (of course), the docked tail was a reference to Valery's Dog (just waiting for the final bit to be added back on!)

Stuart