Version 11 of Mathematica • Hacker News Board

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#11

Post by nine_k » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 5:30 PM UTC

Aardwolf wrote: post #2

Would have been great if this version fixed the syntax. Square brackets for function arguments makes no sense, neither mathematically, nor programming language wise :) Same for Sin requiring a capital letter, and curly braces instead of square brackets for matrices

Won't it be a huge breaking change?

Consistency and backwards-compatibility are much more important for most existing users, whatever their aestetic preferences may be.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#12

Post by DonHopkins » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

grabcocque wrote: post #3

Wow, he's rather fond of himself, isn't he.

After a year of Donald Trump, I find Stephen Wolfram's competent and scientific self-fondness quite refreshing.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#13

Post by dzdt » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

Aardwolf wrote: post #2

Would have been great if this version fixed the syntax. Square brackets for function arguments makes no sense, neither mathematically, nor programming language wise :) Same for Sin requiring a capital letter, and curly braces instead of square brackets for matrices

Those are such trivial details! These are the things that matter in day one of using the language, and make no difference for anyone who has made the slightest effort to get familiar with the language. Breaking compatibility for such a silly style reason would be the height of stupidity!

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#14

Post by sbmassey » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

Aardwolf wrote: post #2

Would have been great if this version fixed the syntax. Square brackets for function arguments makes no sense, neither mathematically, nor programming language wise :) Same for Sin requiring a capital letter, and curly braces instead of square brackets for matrices

The syntax is consistent and works fine, and I'm not sure that changing the syntax so it looks like some other programming language is a good use of anyones time and energy

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#15

Post by laichzeit0 » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

If I didn't know better I'd have assumed from all the first person pronouns that Wolfram is the lead developer and coded 90% of the new version's features himself.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#16

Post by taliesinb » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

delish wrote: post #9

I recommend that Stephen Wolfram skeptics read this press release. I was surprised by language-level support for 3D printing: In Version 11 it’s finally realistic to take any 3D plot, and just 3D print it. I didn't know that I wanted this until I saw it. Generally I prefer small, simple languages. But Mathematica is my favorite large language. I'm also happy that, even though Mathematica 11 introduces flashy features…

> A question for Mathematica-folk: does Mathematica have support for direct manipulation like Toby Schachman's works?[] I find direct manipulation more pleasant than typing characters.

Locator comes to mind:

https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Locator.html

https://youtu.be/6wOLBVFdek8?t=11s

And more generally Manipulate which makes it easy to whip together a let-me-explore-how-this-depends-on-that type of widget.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#17

Post by alexbeloi » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

delish wrote: post #9

I recommend that Stephen Wolfram skeptics read this press release. I was surprised by language-level support for 3D printing: In Version 11 it’s finally realistic to take any 3D plot, and just 3D print it. I didn't know that I wanted this until I saw it. Generally I prefer small, simple languages. But Mathematica is my favorite large language. I'm also happy that, even though Mathematica 11 introduces flashy features…

William Stein, number theorist at University of Washington, founded and built up Sage. It's designed to be cloud-based and acts as a common interface for many things (including Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, etc.) but also has it's own libraries. Will recently went on leave from UW to work full time on Sage.

Description from: http://www.sagemath.org/

"SageMath is a free open-source mathematics software system licensed under the GPL. It builds on top of many existing open-source packages: NumPy, SciPy, matplotlib, Sympy, Maxima, GAP, FLINT, R and many more. Access their combined power through a common, Python-based language or directly via interfaces or wrappers. Mission: Creating a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab."

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#18

Post by pwdisswordfish » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #12

grabcocque wrote: post #3

Wow, he's rather fond of himself, isn't he.

After a year of Donald Trump, I find Stephen Wolfram's competent and scientific self-fondness quite refreshing.

Talk about damning with faint praise.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#19

Post by bordercases » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

Aardwolf wrote: post #2

Would have been great if this version fixed the syntax. Square brackets for function arguments makes no sense, neither mathematically, nor programming language wise :) Same for Sin requiring a capital letter, and curly braces instead of square brackets for matrices

Square brackets – one keypress. Curly brackets – two keypresses, shift and the other bracket key.

Result: reserved key for brackets, instead of mixing brackets and numbers while making the only kind of bracket an entire key more to get to.

Evaluation: it's clean and efficient.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#20

Post by skolos » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 6:07 PM UTC

It now has

data on Pokémon and lots of other useful things

I love this - will be able to show off my kids a tool that I use all the time for work.