Creating fractals through computers

Question

What are some beginner softwares for creating fractals on computers?

Answer 1

I suppose you do not want to be bothered by specifics of the graphical representation - i.e. you do not want to explicitly code the graphics.

Then generally you can use pretty much the standard tools: Mathematica, Matlab (not so sure about Maple). If you can use Matlab then using Python with matplotlib should be pretty easy.

If you know how to write programs in C++ MathGL is worth a look for graphics.

Answer 2

The program Fractal Stream makes good images of fractals based on complex dynamical systems.

Answer 3

Check the program Mandel by Wolf Jung. It has many demos which are a good intruduction to theory. Source code is available.