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Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

blog.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#141

Post by jdiez17 »

ras_west wrote: post #137
jdiez17 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, now I understand your question. Reading the blog post made me think it would actually be a full implementation of the Wolfram Language for free. So I was curious and signed up for a developer license. I got to the confirmation page, which helpfully told me to run "WolframScript" to activate the license. But there was no download link, so I googled around and found this[1] page. They seem to only have packages f…

Click the Download button on https://www.wolfram.com/developer/ Its linked from the article.

I see, thank you. I must have clicked that link to sign up for a developer license, but somehow I don't remember being offered to download the thing.

I feel silly now, but that was pretty confusing.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#142

Post by jxy »

jdiez17 wrote: post #107
eigenspace wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize that. But what I said was that I'm not clear on what the 'Wolfram Engine' is and what it cannot do. It doesn't seem like a full implementation of the Wolfram Language for free, but I don't actually know. Or is it that it's missing the Mathematica front end but has a full backend kernel implementation?

Yeah, now I understand your question. Reading the blog post made me think it would actually be a full implementation of the Wolfram Language for free. So I was curious and signed up for a developer license. I got to the confirmation page, which helpfully told me to run "WolframScript" to activate the license. But there was no download link, so I googled around and found this[1] page. They seem to only have packages f…

This the correct download page: https://www.wolfram.com/engine/

You get a file `WolframEngine_12.0.0_LINUX.sh` about 1 GiB.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#143

Post by reikonomusha »

eps wrote: post #106
reikonomusha wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but I am claiming it’s uncommon to use closed source developer tools (compilers, interpreters, standard libraries, etc.). The mere fact that the most popular programming languages in the world are provided as open source implementations is a testament to that. There are some stragglers. I think K is closed source. Commercial implementations of APL are closed source but somewhat popula…

Nearly all professional Windows development has been and still is done in Visual Studio. This alone makes your "uncommon" claim void, and there are other examples outside of the Windows ecosystem equally well-rooted in proprietory tools.

Writing code in C or C++ does not lock me down in any way. Using the Windows OS APIs does, yes, but there are entirely robust ways of writing C++ on Windows using an open source toolchain that are popular. And as we have seen, Microsoft is increasingly going in a direction of open sourcing more and more of their tooling. Look at everything that has gone on with C#, F#, the .NET stack, etc. So while I agree with you that MSVC is used, and used often, I don’t think that’s a strong argument.

Now if MS had their own language (they did...) that was closed source (it was...), the argument would be more akin to this Wolfram debate. But MS learned that wouldn’t fly, and adopted an OSS strategy.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#144

Post by brobdingnagians »

reikonomusha wrote: post #3

> Why Aren’t You Using Our Technology? It’s not open source. Even if the engine is “free”, I don’t want to build an open source product with it and hope to be granted a “free production license.” If I build something on my own time I don’t want to ask my employer to purchase a “production license” as soon as it becomes useful. Wolfram believes that mathematics software (or “computational knowledge” or whatever he cal…

You seem to have an axe to grind. They have made a very nice ecosystem over the course of 30 years, they are opening it up more. They are proud of "how uniform, elegant and stable a design we’ve been able to maintain across the whole language." It is difficult to get that in an open source project and ecosystem. This has some marvelous qualities that come from its closed source nature. It is special because of that. Having both open source and closed source projects in the world complement each other. Use the best tool for the job. Sometimes the best tool is to be closed source, sometimes open source. There are pros _and_ cons to _both_. I think it is great and applaud them for making such a nice tool, and now making it more widely available. Maybe it wouldn't be so great if it started out open source, or would be similar to open source things and not be distinct enough, so I'm grateful for what it is and what it is not.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#145

Post by arnoud-buzing »

iamcreasy wrote: post #124

So it only provides a command line interface, but not the notebook interface. Am I getting it right?

There is a Jupyter notebook interface for the Wolfram Language:

https://github.com/WolframResearch/WolframLanguageForJupyter

Additionally, many IDEs support Wolfram Language for syntax coloring, command completion, contextual help, etc.:

http://www.wolfram.com/developer/

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#146

Post by mruts »

enriquto wrote: post #59
criley2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But that’s completely at odds with how most software engineers work these days. Most software is grounded in an open source development and deployment tool chain. Imagine saying this with a straight face. Maybe in web development, but the vast majority of programmers are using closed source tools to produce closed source software. You're either thinking of a tiny picture vs the whole picture (web devs vs programming…

In applied math, data science, statistics, the OP is right: free software is the norm.

Excel? SAS? Stata? Matlab? All are very popular tools in data science and statistics. You could argue that open source tools have become more popular recently, but I would hardly call open source software the "norm."

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#147

Post by tux1968 »

eigenspace wrote: post #69

Okay, so I read the post and I'm still not clear on what the actual difference is between Mathematica and the Wolfram Engine. Does anyone have any insight here? Presumably this isn't intended to cannibalize Mathematica sales so I'd expect that many of the things I'm used to doing in Mathematica wouldn't work here but I don't really see any discussion of what it can't do.

Came here to ask the same question, and even with the answers you've already received, it still seems very murky.

If you look on their web site for Mathematica[1] it has several bullet points that includes the Wolfram Engine. One of the other separate points is "Wolfram Algorithmbase"[2], so presumably all those algorithms are not part of the engine and only available if you buy full Mathematica.

[1] http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/

[2] http://www.wolfram.com/algorithmbase/

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#148

Post by carlob »

reikonomusha wrote: post #134
eigenspace wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I've found thing since learning Julia I've become pretty distrustful of the whole notion of prototyping in one language and then doing a full implementation in another. It just seems so unnecessary when you have a language where you can start out in a highly interactive state that seems a lot like Python or Matlab but then you can seamlessly start optimizing or generalizing functions and end up with somet…

I feel the same, except with Common Lisp, whose interactivity is maybe only rivaled by Smalltalk, and whose performance can be made close to that of C for real-world applications.

I don't think interactivity and performance are enough to make a good production language. For example, I find Java painful to write without a good IDE, because of all the boilerplate, however it's that boilerplate that makes it very easy to read and refactor.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#150

Post by eps »

reikonomusha wrote: post #143
eps wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly all professional Windows development has been and still is done in Visual Studio. This alone makes your "uncommon" claim void, and there are other examples outside of the Windows ecosystem equally well-rooted in proprietory tools.

Writing code in C or C++ does not lock me down in any way. Using the Windows OS APIs does, yes, but there are entirely robust ways of writing C++ on Windows using an open source toolchain that are popular. And as we have seen, Microsoft is increasingly going in a direction of open sourcing more and more of their tooling. Look at everything that has gone on with C#, F#, the .NET stack, etc. So while I agree with you t…

>>> I am claiming it’s uncommon to use closed source developer tools

>> Visual studio

> I don't think that's a strong argument

Lovely talking to you.

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