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I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language

blog.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language

#41

Post by sn6uv »

droelf wrote: post #12
nnq wrote: post #5

...if only S. Wolfram would finally have the most obvious insight that he's totally missing: Open-source it! The only programming languages that will ever succeed from now on will be the open source ones . Yeah, he can keep special-purpose libraries closed-source. And the server-software behind Wolfram. Maybe even the Mathematica GUI if he also offers a free "community version" or something on the side. But otherwise…

Yeah, I agree. In the meantime there is an awesome re-implementation in Python called Mathics. It's also fun to hack some of the not-yet implemented Mathematica commands (I did that last summer). https://github.com/mathics/Mathics

Mathics maintainer here.I'm glad you find Mathics fun to contribute to, I certainly do. Each function is a small independent part so it's really easy to get involved (that's a major goal of mine at least) Thanks for your contribution.

Re: I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language

#42

Post by JackFr »

jordigh wrote: post #40
JackFr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is that irritating combination of someone who lacks humility and is unable to ever admit being wrong (except superfluously to make a larger point) and yet is demonstrably, objectively a genius.

It is not clear how much of a genius he is or not. His NKS is just a bunch of repackaged ideas, mostly unacknowledged, with lots of pretty pictures, with some original work. It's borderline crank mathematics. The other things attributed to him are dubious, as he has a big problem attributing to himself the work of others. He has threatened to sue employees of his who try to publish mathematical results of their own w…

His physics Phd from Caltech at 20 and MacArthur grant at 21 are objective and substantial accomplishments, which predate Mathematica, etc.

Re: I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language

#43

Post by jordigh »

JackFr wrote: post #42
jordigh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not clear how much of a genius he is or not. His NKS is just a bunch of repackaged ideas, mostly unacknowledged, with lots of pretty pictures, with some original work. It's borderline crank mathematics. The other things attributed to him are dubious, as he has a big problem attributing to himself the work of others. He has threatened to sue employees of his who try to publish mathematical results of their own w…

His physics Phd from Caltech at 20 and MacArthur grant at 21 are objective and substantial accomplishments, which predate Mathematica, etc.

Sure, he was a precocious student. What came after that is more difficult to measure.

edit: He may well be a genius. To almost all of his contemporaries, Galois seemed like an incomprehensible twit. Wolfram may be a Galois, or he may just be a precocious blowhard full of nothing but hot air.

Re: I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language

#44

Post by ansgri »

IshKebab wrote: post #15
nnq wrote: post #5

...if only S. Wolfram would finally have the most obvious insight that he's totally missing: Open-source it! The only programming languages that will ever succeed from now on will be the open source ones . Yeah, he can keep special-purpose libraries closed-source. And the server-software behind Wolfram. Maybe even the Mathematica GUI if he also offers a free "community version" or something on the side. But otherwise…

Is the language itself that interesting anyway? I think 99% of the appeal is the algorithms and datasets they provide, which I seriously doubt they would ever open.

The language editor is what's really good. It allows full structural editing, mixing Lisp-style and math-style expressions. And the workbook allows to display all kinds of objects. Which (like images) you could actually copy-paste as values in expressions.

Re: I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language

#45

Post by DonaldFisk »

jacobolus wrote: post #14
nnq wrote: post #5

...if only S. Wolfram would finally have the most obvious insight that he's totally missing: Open-source it! The only programming languages that will ever succeed from now on will be the open source ones . Yeah, he can keep special-purpose libraries closed-source. And the server-software behind Wolfram. Maybe even the Mathematica GUI if he also offers a free "community version" or something on the side. But otherwise…

A mathematica license costs $2745 or $1000/year for “professional” use, $300/year for “hobbyist” use, or $115 for students. Every serious university in the world and a large number of technical businesses need to pay for site licenses. If it were open source, many more people around the world would have access, but Wolfram’s cash cow would dry up. Thankfully, open source programming environments keep improving, and b…

He's spent time, thought, and money developing software, and people are expecting him to just give it away, and allow others to make money out of it without giving back anything in return? That would be fair only if the companies which use it to increase their profits also open sourced their software.

Before you suggest developers the consultancy route, that penalizes the developers of software which is so well written and documented it can be used straight out of the box.

One thing I'd do differently to him: whenever the user isn't goint to profit from the software financially (in this case, hobbyists and students), there's a good case to be made not to charge for it, as without an initial user base, it will be difficult to sell it to companies. But if he wrote the code, he can decide on its licence.

Re: I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language

#46

Post by Retra »

galfarragem wrote: post #17
xupybd wrote: post #8

Just me or does that guy seem to lack humility, I don't know something about the way he wrote that.

Normally very smart people have an huge ego and hate politics. It's always a pity to see so much potential wasted.

What's wasted?

Re: I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language

#47

Post by kenbellows »

DonaldFisk wrote: post #45
jacobolus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A mathematica license costs $2745 or $1000/year for “professional” use, $300/year for “hobbyist” use, or $115 for students. Every serious university in the world and a large number of technical businesses need to pay for site licenses. If it were open source, many more people around the world would have access, but Wolfram’s cash cow would dry up. Thankfully, open source programming environments keep improving, and b…

He's spent time, thought, and money developing software, and people are expecting him to just give it away, and allow others to make money out of it without giving back anything in return? That would be fair only if the companies which use it to increase their profits also open sourced their software. Before you suggest developers the consultancy route, that penalizes the developers of software which is so well writt…

He doesn't have to open source it/give it away if he doesn't want to, of course, but if he doesn't, his language and tools will probably eventually be surpassed in use by other, more open tools and languages. That's the way language and tool development has been going lately.

Re: I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language

#48

Post by lmm »

danso wrote: post #26

Going to have to join the, I don't quite get what Wolfram thinks is the big deal crowd: > The goal of the book is to take people from zero to the point where they know enough about the Wolfram Language that they can routinely use it to create programs for things they want to do. And when I say “zero”, I really mean “zero”. This is a book for everyone. One of the examples he gives is how to: Make a word cloud from the…

Code is read more than it's written, so I think Times[2,3] is actually a very good idea. I think a lot of languages give arithmetic a privileged place in the syntax, because it's used in simple example programs and was one of the first things computers were used for, when actually they'd be better off spending their syntax budget on more general features.

Re: I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language

#49

Post by taliesinb »

carlob wrote: post #32
danso wrote: post #26

Going to have to join the, I don't quite get what Wolfram thinks is the big deal crowd: > The goal of the book is to take people from zero to the point where they know enough about the Wolfram Language that they can routinely use it to create programs for things they want to do. And when I say “zero”, I really mean “zero”. This is a book for everyone. One of the examples he gives is how to: Make a word cloud from the…

FYI you can write Times, but mostly you'll write . I guess that example was about explaining the lispy concept "everything is an expression". It's right there at the top of the screenshot, he actually went from explaining and + to saying they are actual functions like anything else. http://www.wolfram.com/language/elementary-introduction/02-i...

carlob meant to write a single * there, which became italics instead. Point is that Times is the actual 'FullForm' for multiplication, the and * is syntax sugar for it.

Re: I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language

#50

Post by JorgeGT »

jordigh wrote: post #43
JackFr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His physics Phd from Caltech at 20 and MacArthur grant at 21 are objective and substantial accomplishments, which predate Mathematica, etc.

Sure, he was a precocious student. What came after that is more difficult to measure. edit: He may well be a genius. To almost all of his contemporaries, Galois seemed like an incomprehensible twit. Wolfram may be a Galois, or he may just be a precocious blowhard full of nothing but hot air.

Fortunately, pistol duels have fallen out of style nowadays...
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