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Version 11 of Mathematica

blog.wolfram.com

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Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#31

Post by williamstein »

coldtea wrote: post #24
mathattack wrote: post #21

An open question independent of the author: What do people use Mathematica for that can't be done in R, SAS, Matlab, SPSS or Python libraries. Is it a great innovation that other tools have caught up with, or is it still getting a lot of use at the bleeding edge?

> An open question independent of the author: What do people use Mathematica for that can't be done in R, SAS, Matlab, SPSS or Python libraries. All those don't offer a seamless environment, that's hassle free, easy to setup, with commercial support, a great GUI, great documentation and works across so many science domains and with different approaches. So, the question is quite (but not that severely) like "what peo…

We (see https://cloud.sagemath.com) and others (e.g., https://www.continuum.io/) do offer commercial support for Python (etc.) and an easy to setup environment. Of course, Matlab is also commercially supported by Mathworks, and it seems that R is now commercially supported by Microsoft (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/r-server).

[Edit: added Microsoft]

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#32

Post by protomyth »

jlarocco wrote: post #28
protomyth wrote: post #5

I do wonder if they have ever thought of building a Mathematica Machine like the old Lisp and Smalltalk machines?

I doubt it. I think the big take away lesson from the language specific machines was that it's not worth it. LOTS of money is spent on the R&D that goes into making x86, ARM, etc. faster and better each iteration, and without the economies of scale that come with a huge install base, it's basically just a money pit. Even if a dedicated Mathematica CPU was faster now, the x86 version will be faster in a few years anyw…

> I think the big take away lesson from the language specific machines was that it's not worth it.

I think the take away was learned when every generation of the x86 would be a significant leap in performance. As you say in paragraph 3, things might change with the leveling off of improvements.

> On the other hand, it might be a neat idea to OEM a high end x86 system and sell it as a purpose built "mathematica machine," with Mathematica pre-installed, the best supported GPU, optimal RAM and CPU, etc.

I've been pitched by salesmen that their machine is a killer machine for Mathematica. We don't use it here, so I was not really into it as much as buying the sealed medical computers for the carpentry people.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#33

Post by pmiller2 »

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…

> Generally I prefer small, simple languages.

I would argue that MMA is a small language hiding behind a gigantic, domain-specific library.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#34

Post by sp332 »

jlarocco wrote: post #28
protomyth wrote: post #5

I do wonder if they have ever thought of building a Mathematica Machine like the old Lisp and Smalltalk machines?

I doubt it. I think the big take away lesson from the language specific machines was that it's not worth it. LOTS of money is spent on the R&D that goes into making x86, ARM, etc. faster and better each iteration, and without the economies of scale that come with a huge install base, it's basically just a money pit. Even if a dedicated Mathematica CPU was faster now, the x86 version will be faster in a few years anyw…

A lot of Mathematica is already written in Mathematica. When Apple switched Macs to Intel CPUs, they included Mathematica as a flagship program, and flew their engineers out to do a port in secret. One engineer said the hardest part of the port was deciding what to do with the rest of the weekend.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#35

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#36

Post by beevai142 »

coldtea wrote: post #24
mathattack wrote: post #21

An open question independent of the author: What do people use Mathematica for that can't be done in R, SAS, Matlab, SPSS or Python libraries. Is it a great innovation that other tools have caught up with, or is it still getting a lot of use at the bleeding edge?

> An open question independent of the author: What do people use Mathematica for that can't be done in R, SAS, Matlab, SPSS or Python libraries. All those don't offer a seamless environment, that's hassle free, easy to setup, with commercial support, a great GUI, great documentation and works across so many science domains and with different approaches. So, the question is quite (but not that severely) like "what peo…

I don't think that's really the answer --- e.g. Matlab has all of those (and the open source things are YMMV).

The reason I've seen people prefer Mathematica is because its symbolic computation and visualization capabilities are both powerful and easy to use for basic things. Here, it is just very good, as to be expected from popular software with a long history with significant resources spent on its development. (The open source alternatives for symbolic computation may be as good in some applications for experts in some mathematical fields, but the general purpose user experience is not as good. As an alternative to Mathematica, I'm currently using Sagemath, and while it's perfectly OK for many things, the polish is often lacking.)

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#37

Post by Mathnerd314 »

mathattack wrote: post #21

An open question independent of the author: What do people use Mathematica for that can't be done in R, SAS, Matlab, SPSS or Python libraries. Is it a great innovation that other tools have caught up with, or is it still getting a lot of use at the bleeding edge?

Mathematica is kind of the opposite of "the bleeding edge". If you want the latest algorithms, statistics, etc., those will be found in R, C++, Python etc. in the author's website. If you want well-tested, mostly-robust algorithms, those (might) be in Mathematica; they follow innovation, rather than leading it.

Mathematica also has some algorithms from the 70's and 80's that aren't widely available as open source, and then there's the notebook interface (but see Jupyter / IPython). The part I've found most useful has been Wolfram|Alpha; it's really nice to be able to say "August 2, 2016 - September 4, 2017" and get back the number of days, weeks, and hours between those two times.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#38

Post by lispm »

jlarocco wrote: post #28
protomyth wrote: post #5

I do wonder if they have ever thought of building a Mathematica Machine like the old Lisp and Smalltalk machines?

I doubt it. I think the big take away lesson from the language specific machines was that it's not worth it. LOTS of money is spent on the R&D that goes into making x86, ARM, etc. faster and better each iteration, and without the economies of scale that come with a huge install base, it's basically just a money pit. Even if a dedicated Mathematica CPU was faster now, the x86 version will be faster in a few years anyw…

You would not really need a specialized CPU anymore for a Lisp Machine. Those CPUs were invented to keep instructions small and efficient, provide large address spaces and enable simple compilers. In the last part of the 80s the trend to RISC CPUs was clear and several RISC CPUs were developed for Lisp, but they did not reach the market anymore. The SPARC cpu was mildly inspired by Lisp / Smalltalk. Since new CPUs were not happening for Lisp (there was no money for it), two of the existing CPUs were ported as VMs to other processors (Symbolics Ivory to ALPHA because of its 64bit support) and the Xerox Lisp system was ported to x86 and SPARC.

Besides the CPU there is another, even more important, difference. Lisp systems were all the way down to the metal developed in Lisp. Mathematica is largely written in C++ (runtime, environment, ...) and runs on top of a conventional OS (Windows, OSX, Linux, ...).

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#39

Post by pjmlp »

mathattack wrote: post #21

An open question independent of the author: What do people use Mathematica for that can't be done in R, SAS, Matlab, SPSS or Python libraries. Is it a great innovation that other tools have caught up with, or is it still getting a lot of use at the bleeding edge?

It is how mainstream programming might have looked like if Lisp Machines instead of UNIX had caught on.

Other than that, it is as coldtea answers.

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