how can it possibly infringe on any kind of patent to "promise that commands are executed in order".

maybe thats a difficult problem for hardware to solve. for software, thats just how software works.

maple is solving differential equations and that may have at some point been difficult to write software for. if they have a patent for that, then so be it. I start a company that hires professors who are really good at solving differential equations, and sell the results. basically what maple yields, except produced in a different way. am i infringing on the patent?

patents patent technology. not results. you cant have a patent for "a rocket that flies to the moon" in the sense that now nobody else can build rockets flying to the moon. you can have a patent for a way to store liquid oxygen in tanks to make it yield the energy required to get a rocket to the moon. patenting concepts of things you want to do is at least morally wrong.

a hardware patent should not be capable of preventing someone from writing software that does the same thing.

its like patenting a drug that cures cancer and then using that patent to prevent oncologists from curing cancer by applying chemotherapy.