51–60 of 106 posts
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
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> 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. (T…
That's true, Matlab does -- I was referring mostly to the others, disparate attempts at a cohesive solution.
Wow, he's rather fond of himself, isn't he.
Okay, it's been said. Now let's move on. For more, see all previous submissions with SW as the author. Beneath all the bluster, the product does in fact appear to be an embarrassment of riches for programmers (or at least its customers).
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, an…
What would be those (if you got a minute)?
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.
It does annoy me a bit that it's becoming a mix of a client environment and an online service, but Alpha does have its use.
Not really sure what to make of the Pokémon stuff, though :)
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?
> What do people use Mathematica for that can't be done in R, SAS, Matlab, SPSS or Python libraries. Nothing; but Mathematica has been the tool of choice for cs education (or math+cs) and people tend to stick to what they know.
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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.
Not every mishap in computing is the fault of Unix. :) SBCL and ACL2 run quite nicely on Unix, and their authors haven't been deterred by it. Neither have the Mathematica authors.
While these Lisps run fine on unix, they do not define how the system is programmed, but are "just" another application environment. It's still pipes/signals/ioctl()s down there.
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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.
Mathematica is squarely on my "stuff I'd buy if I had cash to spare" category. I use Jupyter on a daily basis for a few different languages and it's improving steadily every month, but I kind of wish I was using Mathematica instead most of the time. As it is, I poke at it occasionally on a Raspberry Pi (which is now mostly fast enough) and wonder wistfully what it would be like to run on an i7 (or, rather, a cluster…