Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

blog.stephenwolfram.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 358 posts

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#151

Post by reikonomusha »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #144
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.…

No axe to grind. I’d like to think I’m a representative sample of my fellow software engineers. I don’t even want to make statements about open vs closed source generally. But as it pertains to developer tools (compilers, interpreters, debuggers, runtimes, standard libraries), open source has been hugely successful, hugely popular, and both individuals and corporations depend on that fact. You’re right, and I think I fairly painted a picture of Wolfram’s thesis about Mathematica being a commercial closed source product: He has the best general-purpose CAS on the market right now. That’s real value! But it’s not persuasive enough to spend my (or my employer’s) time, energy, and other resources into making it the source language of my (or my employer’s) product, IP, services, open source libraries, etc. Under discussion is a tool to write and run code in Wolfram Language, with a premise that providing the tool free of charge for use in a limited set of legal circumstances is useful. I argue that the legal framework around the usage of the tool is more consequential to its adoption and use than the cost.

With that said, I don’t speak for everyone! If folks find this tool useful, love writing Wolfram code, have no expectations about the portability or maintainability of the code, trust Wolfram and the contract to which they’re agreeing, then by all means! More value for people is better!

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#152

Post by arnoud-buzing »

781 wrote: post #40

It doesn't seem to have a notebook interface. Maybe someone can hook this into Jupyter as a Wolfram kernel?

There is this:

https://github.com/WolframResearch/WolframLanguageForJupyter

Additionally many IDEs have support for Wolfram Language, e.g.

Eclipse: https://www.wolfram.com/workbench/ IntelliJ IDEA: https://wlplugin.halirutan.de/

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#154

Post by arnoud-buzing »

dmitriid wrote: post #8

> Why Aren’t You Using Our Technology? - It's arcane/esoteric - Its capabilities are largely unknown (I have mixed results with wolframalpha even for simple queries. Perhaps programmatic model is more deterministic) - Its licensing model is murky and needlessly complicated

Wolfram|Alpha and Wolfram Language are two completely different things:

Wolfram|Alpha is a natural language computational engine which takes queries and computes custom answers based on back-end knowledge databases and a large amount of Wolfram Language algorithms.

Wolfram Language is a computational (programming) language. There is a good 'fast introduction' for it here:

http://www.wolfram.com/language/fast-introduction-for-progra...

The full reference documentation for the Wolfram Language is located here:

https://reference.wolfram.com/language/

(It's extremely well-documented with extensive examples for every function).

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#155

Post by kluck »

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…

Sort of Wolframs reply to why Wolfram is not open-source: https://blog.wolfram.com/2019/04/02/why-wolfram-tech-isnt-op...

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#156

Post by reikonomusha »

gricardo99 wrote: post #136
reikonomusha wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m open to being wrong, but my domain is not and has not been web apps. It’s mostly been things like satellite antenna control software, quantum computers, scientific computing, and AI. Each of those domains, in my experience, has been firmly grounded in open source. (It does not mean, of course, that the end product is open source.) I recognize there are some domains that are steeped in closed source solutions with…

I'm not disagreeing with you, just answering your honest question: >What programming language stack do you use that’s closed source? Verilog/System Verilog (generally HDL/FPGA/ASIC design/verification). Yes, it's a niche (some may even say it's not software, it's hardware, but it is indeed a large code base that requires a software engineering environment/toolchain/practices/etc...). Again, just answering your questi…

There’s also Q [0] and kdb+ [1] as another example.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(programming_language_from...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kdb%2B

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#157

Post by enraged_camel »

enriquto wrote: post #85
reikonomusha wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maxima is a fine piece of software, and I’m a huge proponent of its development, but doesn’t compete in the breadth or depth of Mathematica (or Maple) at all.

It certainly competes due to the fact of being free software, which is a strong requirement of my workflow. I can try Mathematica and Maple (and love them), but ultimately I have to end using a free software solution.

>>It certainly competes due to the fact of being free software, which is a strong requirement of my workflow.

The parent said it doesn't compete "in the breadth or depth of Mathematica" and you responded with "it does compete because it's free!"

Your response does not refute the parent's argument.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#158

Post by brobdingnagians »

reikonomusha wrote: post #151
brobdingnagians wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

No axe to grind. I’d like to think I’m a representative sample of my fellow software engineers. I don’t even want to make statements about open vs closed source generally. But as it pertains to developer tools (compilers, interpreters, debuggers, runtimes, standard libraries), open source has been hugely successful, hugely popular, and both individuals and corporations depend on that fact. You’re right, and I think I…

I agree on that point. It definitely wouldn't fit for a lot of people, and licensing is extremely important. Point taken on developer tools as well. But some diversity doesn't hurt there. :)

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#159

Post by arnoud-buzing »

fori1to10 wrote: post #62

I have Mathematica installed. Can I have WolframEngine side by side?

Yes, but it will not give you anything new: The Wolfram Engine provides full access to the Wolfram Language (just like Mathematica) via command line access and executing Wolfram Language scripts.

Re: Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

#160

Post by reikonomusha »

kluck wrote: post #155
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…

Sort of Wolframs reply to why Wolfram is not open-source: https://blog.wolfram.com/2019/04/02/why-wolfram-tech-isnt-op...

This blog post conflates open source with a community development model.
Post reply on HN