I Wrote a Book to Teach the Wolfram Language

I've read this http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/ linked in another comment on this post.

He is one of those smart douchebag assholes type (L. Torvalds, S. Jobs etc.), probably even a prodigy genius level of smart. I have not read enough bios about, lets say, Torvalds or Jobs, but S. Wolfram looks like pure evil against them.

The eye opener for me was that Mathematica was basically stollen from University of Illinois[0]. It goes on and on, like that [1].

I am amazed how S. Wolfram managed to settle courts in his favour, or just successfully threaten with courts. How can you threaten someone of citing your (I guess public) work, if it will be openly and correctly cited, and people know details about it? Threatening your employees, etc. How can anyone work there?

Sorry, for this rant, but after some reading today, S. Wolfram looks like Genghis Khan of academics. Gives impression of great leader, who have accomplished something who have not done before, though simply chops heads for everyone who can cross his path.

In my eyes, a person who does not respect others, does not deserve respect themselves.

[0] > Wolfram quit Illinois, took the program private, and entered into complicated lawsuits with both his former employee and his co-authors (all since settled).

[1] > ..because one of our citations referred to a certain mathematical proof, and they claimed the existence of this proof was a trade secret of Wolfram Research.

That helps to prevent his software from becoming a cash cow, as it encourages constant innovation on his part to stay ahead of the open-source competition. But until the open source replacement is as good, he'll still be able to earn money by licensing it.

He has the same 'expert blindspot' as so many others when it comes to learning and pedagogy.

If you show this book or go through this book with a true novice, like a child or complete non-programmer (no one has 'zero' knowledge like he says), this would turn them off programming for a long time.

To hook people in, to give them an actual /reason/ to learn programming, you need to show them how programming can be used to do something fun or useful. For example making a little game, or making something to help with a spreadsheet or so forth.

Instead, he waits until the very end of the book to start thinking about using the language to create something useful: "OK, so now everything is ready to talk about deploying things to the web. And at this point, people will be able to start creating useful, practical pieces of software that they can share with the world."

Start with how to make a simple web page, or a simple game that others can play, etc. Don't end with that. Make it easier for people to use your tool to make games or practical applications.

Then again, as others have pointed out, the fact that this tool is proprietary though makes it a non-starter for novices, anyway, in my opinion.

A free version of the "Wolfram Language" (I can't help but still think of it as Mathematica) runs on the Raspberry Pi, which makes for not only a fast way make little hardware prototypes and tinker, but also a cheap way for someone to learn to be comfortable getting a computer to do things. I would have loved something like this in addition to the Lego, Construx, chemistry, and physics kits I toyed with as a kid.

That, and there is a sort of consistency to most of the commands. E.g. it is possible to develop an intuition about the order of arguments while solving one type of problem, and have that intuition still apply when you switch to commands from a completely different domain.