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Mathematica v12.1

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Mathematica v12.1

#71

Post by reikonomusha »

vtail wrote: post #70
reikonomusha wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have funding; that’s great! Exactly what I’m saying is that these projects manage to be community run (to some extent) while still remaining successful. If Wolfram’s reason to not publish the source code is that they believe they would no longer have a business model, they should list that as the One Reason, not 12 gaslighting reasons.

Well, they clearly think their model works for them. If you think otherwise, it's on you to convince them that they should change their model, or start your own effort if you think it will benefit humanity. I don't think they necessarily need to "defend" their business choices.

You're right, they don't need to defend it. But they shouldn't put out reasons that don't make sense. They ought to just put nothing out at all and operate as normal.

Re: Mathematica v12.1

#72

Post by dagw »

superflit wrote: post #59

Anyone here uses Mathematica besides Physics or pure mathematics? I mean is it worth using the machine learning from Mathematica or Tensorflow is better? Is it better to use integer optimization solvers or then Mathematica? In which ways you are using Mathematica and Really leveraging it? Sorry for my question but I think and suspect I am missing something bigger. Will be glad if someone Illuminate me. And please be…

Depends how wide your definition of 'physics' is. We have a couple of environmental scientists at work that use it to model water pollution for example. The big win is that they can basically just type in their differential equations exactly like they would write them on paper and have the answers simply pop out.

Re: Mathematica v12.1

#73

Post by b215826 »

saboot wrote: post #53

I'm a physicist and I've used mathematica sparingly off and on for several years, mostly manipulating symbolic formulas. I still do not understand what I'm doing half the time. Mostly just googling and stackoverflow answers get me by. For example, I don't understand why I can't use subscripts as symbols? Any recommendations on trying to 'get' mathematica?

As someone who started using Mathematica only very recently, I found The Wolfram Language: Fast Introduction for Programmers [1] very helpful. It's the quickest way to get started with the Wolfram language if you've seen a bit of functional programming before, e.g., Python's map(F, x) is equivalent to Wolfram's Map[F, x], reduce(F, x) equivalent to Fold[F, x], etc. There's also An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language by Stephen Wolfram [2,3] which is available freely as Mathematica Notebooks, although I'm yet to read it fully.

[1]: https://www.wolfram.com/language/fast-introduction-for-progr...

[2]: https://www.wolfram.com/language/elementary-introduction/2nd...

[3]: https://www.wolfram.com/language/elementary-introduction/nbs...

Re: Mathematica v12.1

#74

Post by b215826 »

superflit wrote: post #59

Anyone here uses Mathematica besides Physics or pure mathematics? I mean is it worth using the machine learning from Mathematica or Tensorflow is better? Is it better to use integer optimization solvers or then Mathematica? In which ways you are using Mathematica and Really leveraging it? Sorry for my question but I think and suspect I am missing something bigger. Will be glad if someone Illuminate me. And please be…

> Anyone here uses Mathematica besides Physics or pure mathematics?

My adviser (a physicist) uses Mathematica for all non-physics computations as well. It's a clunky language for general purpose computation and doesn't play well with external programs and libraries. The user experience on Linux can also be quite haphazard with frequent crashes and lack of good HiDPI support (I haven't used version 12.1). It's also hard to run headless programs written in Wolfram language. But if you're okay doing everything inside the Mathematica GUI and don't care about the fact that it's a walled ecosystem, don't have a preferred text editor, and don't particularly care for Unix's one-thing-well philosophy, Mathematica might work for you.

Re: Mathematica v12.1

#75

Post by mkl »

veer-chah wrote: post #17

I have tried Mathematica for small duration and in general was wowed by it. For free CAS I would recommend to give Axiom or FriCAS(more actively developed) a run. http://fricas.sourceforge.net/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_(computer_algebra_system...

Or Sympy [1], which is very accessible, and embedded in Python, so connects directly to that huge ecosystem. I teach university maths, and use Sympy for every CAS need.

Live demo: https://live.sympy.org/

[1] https://www.sympy.org/en/index.html

Re: Mathematica v12.1

#77

Post by SethTro »

This is one of the few pieces of non-free software I'm happy to pay for.

I've been doing some PenPlotter for fun, I wonder if I can use Mathematica with HatchFilling for some of my plotting now.

Re: Mathematica v12.1

#78

Post by brandonbloom »

saboot wrote: post #53

I'm a physicist and I've used mathematica sparingly off and on for several years, mostly manipulating symbolic formulas. I still do not understand what I'm doing half the time. Mostly just googling and stackoverflow answers get me by. For example, I don't understand why I can't use subscripts as symbols? Any recommendations on trying to 'get' mathematica?

I've found the "Evaluation of Expressions" doc page to be super useful: https://reference.wolfram.com/language/tutorial/EvaluationOf...

Read through it once to get the gist, then go back and read it again. The second time through, _play_ with each example. Try them out, see how they behave, attempt to apply other things you've learned to each. In no time at all, you'll have the basics down and then will be able to make heads or tails of the other doc pages much more quickly.

Re: Mathematica v12.1

#79

Post by steveklabnik »

vtail wrote: post #64
reikonomusha wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the arguments confused and lacking. Many of those arguments conflate “open source” with “community driven”. Rarely did they make a compelling case as to how availability of the source code would hurt the customers. And many, many amazing open source teams have demonstrated that even including community driven design in some cases does not hamper the quality of the product. Look at Apple and Swift, or Rust, as…

Swift is a great example, but don't forget that is essentially funded by Apple. It would look very different if it would be a true community effort. Rust I'm not very familiar with: how much of their funding is dependent on Mozilla, at least for the core developer(s)? Also, a language + a standard library has a (much!) smaller surface comparing to Wolfram's vision.

Mozilla funds a few things. Some stuff is funded by other companies. Mozilla pays the most folks to work full time, but the amount is tiny compared to the overall set of teams, let alone contributors.
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