Maple, originally developed as a joint research project centered at the University of Waterloo and ETH Zurich, is a computer program for doing a variety of symbolic, numeric, and graphical computations. Such a program is commonly called a CAS, short for Computer Algebra System. The use of CAS programs like Maple, MACSYMA, and Mathematica in research and education has become wide-spread in the past decade or so, as the power and availability of computers has grown.
Maple also provides a programming environment, with a syntax similar to that of pascal. In fact, most of the Maple commands are written in the Maple programming language. It is possible to look at the source for most of the Maple commands, and experience programmers can add their own modifications and extensions to Maple.