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Version 11 of Mathematica

blog.wolfram.com

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Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#71
post #68
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets say you want to build some fancy DIY project, like a food dehydrator. You want to make some mathematical models of the thing, so you pull up Mathematica. To start with, maybe you want to solve some simple mass and energy balances on the thing to find out how much power it will take, and how long it will need to run. No problem, Mathematica does basic algebra right out of the box. It's also got a nice units syste…

This describes well how I use Mathematica. I would also add that compared to Matlab you pay for single license and get whole thing. With Matlab you send list of toolboxes to a manager and got asked "Do you really need symbolic toolbox?" With tools maturing there is a push to use Python for prototyping, but the experience is still not as seamless as with Mathematica. That being said, from my experience Mathematica is…

I tend to agree. I think the CDF player they made was an attempt to address this, but their commitment to that format has always seemed weak.

Performance is the other issue. Mathematica is no slouch, but it can be tough to figure out how to improve things if you need more speed.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#72
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would use it if it didn't prompt me to upgrade to a paid plan every 10 seconds or so...

:/ yeah, so does youtube and pandora now - 'tis the way of the (commercial) world.

I get that it's commercial. I don't get that they'd want to drive off users upon their first half an hour's usage.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#73
post #46

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.

And this is actually a terrible thing. Fortunately my school did this stuff with the Python stack, however the situation is similar to MS Office - it is taught in schools (general education I mean) and so people struggle with e.g. LibreOffice.

However I have to agree that the UI of Mathematica is superb. Jupyter Notebook is a nice free alternative, but its recent development (Jupyter Lab) seemed very "ideish" and got me scared (do not get me wrong, it looks pretty slick and must have been complicated to engineer - but for me the nice thing about the notebook was that it is _not_ an IDE like Netbeans, Eclipse, QT-Creator - i.e. the classic ide UI that is separated into editor, file-viewer, shell and something like variable inspector). But this is a different story.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#74
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.

It helps that the huge library has some of the best documentation I've ever encountered.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#76

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…

Mathematica uses GMP and Linpack for example and those might be used by R or Python also.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#77
post #56

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…

A home edition without support is $95, for the record

Correction: that is the upgrade price, my mistake

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#79
I'm a Mathematica customer for life. I have been using it for the last 6 years, and I've built only one "big" project in it. I don't like it for "software development", but any time I want to hack something together, or do some calculation, whatever the context, I open a Mathematica notebook. The standard library is astounding, and you're up to speed in no time.

Re: Version 11 of Mathematica

#80
post #56

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…

A home edition without support is $95, for the record Correction: that is the upgrade price, my mistake

That's the upgrade price. The home version is $295 (for the record.)

https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica-home-edition/

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