Used it a bit at university to compute some complex integrals if I was stuck or feeling lazy. That was 11 years ago.
Don't think I've even visited the website in the past 6 years.
Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
21–30 of 281 posts
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#22I use it to solve differential equations.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#23I imagine it just stopped being new.
The name makes it seem like pre-beta test software.
I'm waiting for the final release, and then I'm waiting some more for it to be declared stable, and then I'm waiting some more for it to catch on and be declared popular.
Not really, but that's what the name suggests to me.
I just tried it here because of TFA and it's good.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#24Used it a bit at university to compute some complex integrals if I was stuck or feeling lazy. That was 11 years ago. Don't think I've even visited the website in the past 6 years.
It did about a lot of the heavy lifting in my master's thesis, not gonna lie.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#25I think students these days use it for math/calculus, but it isn't seen as something special because they've always had it. It wasn't novel like for us.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#26For me, I never got into using it much (due to lack of experience with Mathematica syntax). I had some niche uses like "how many work days between and " but that's hardly so important. Instead I use the SymPy Live shell https://live.sympy.org/ which does most of what I need in terms of math calculations. I'm a big fan of the sharable links (the thumbtack button below the prompt) that you can post in comments to show…
Sympy live shell is decent, and the latex rendering is pretty sweet. But, it's on ancient versions of everything, runs slowly, and has a C- UI.
Instead, I use Colab with Sympy + latex output and matplotlib (and most other things you could want to import, pre-installed). It's running new versions of things, and backed by more power, with an option to pay for even more. The latex rendering took a bit of poking around stackoverflow, but works just fine.
Feel free to copy:
https://colab.research.google.com/gist/dmlerner/23543255fdde...
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#27 I was enthusiastic, but for medium complexity questions I spend more time footing with syntax then it would take to do it myself. I probably use it for a high complexity question once every few months. I’m happy that it exists, on balance
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#28I still use it once in a while when I don't want to bother converting non-base10 units, like to know the date in 90 days, or how many hours in x days, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#29It's fun for life expectancy.
Step one: Ask for your own life expectancy.
Step two: Ask for the life expectancy of someone years' younger.
Step three: What.
Step four: Oh.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#30They put their "step-by-step" explanations behind a [login/pay]wall which made it significantly less useful. Out of sight, out of mind. It's still there
I think they've always been like that. Good thing is, they have a montly cost, but the mobile app you just buy once and it works forever. And it's not that expensive iirc.
Step by step solutions were free around 9/10 years ago