I recently got hold of two programs that I love dearly: Mathematica and Delphi 2006.

Niether are cheap- both run about $100 if you are a student or teacher. If not, they'll run 10 times that.

Delphi 2006 is the latest incarnation of Borlands Object Pascal and C++. It is a industrial strength programming environment with debugger and lots of bells & whistles. It produces lightning fast executable code. While I am not the worlds greatest C++ programmer, I am a competent Pascal programmer. The Delphi environment lets you mix & match.

Mathematica is absolutely awesome. It is an environment that allows you to do higher math. What makes it so cool for me is that I was never a good math student. I always knew the concepts but I have problems with my vision that makes things really difficult. BAM! Along come Mathmatica and I can put the problems on the screen and I don't have to draw (which I can not do). It also gives you confidence to explore math that might have sounded entirely too scary to mess with. There is a series of 5 differential equations that I needed to learn. After putting them in mathmatica and running them through their paces, I ain't skeered of a few little differential equations anymore.

I sure wish I had this stuff when I was an undergrad. I really envy you guys that are in or starting college now. You've got some of the neatest toys in world history to play with. Jump on that wave and ride!

New technologies like Delphi and Mathematica make new worlds open up; worlds that are accessable to all- not just a few ivory tower coneheads.

Just think what Einstein or Schrodinger might have accomplished with a tool like Mathematica!

JS