Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica • Hacker News Board

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#161

Post by forgotpwd16 » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 8:24 PM UTC

cultofmetatron wrote: post #160

forgotpwd16 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Implementing the language is one thing. Mathics does it well. But implementing the vast library is much harder. (Though the essentials are possible as proved by Mathics.) Let alone assembling the countless example data it comes with. Also nitpick but you can run Wolfram code without Mathematica directly using the Wolfram Engine.

mathics seems really cool. I was thinking of biting the bullet and buying a copy of mathematica since I'm teaching myself higher level math and want a a language that does symbolic computation. Needing to pull a docker file to run seems like a bit of a pain though...

You could also try Wolfram Cloud. Only significant issues a free account has is the inability to upload (so cannot use found notebooks unless you retype everything yourself) and files expiring (becoming unavailable unless you pay) after 60 days. But give Mathics a chance first.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#162

Post by david38 » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 8:30 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #128

jiggawatts wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The saddest thing about Mathematica is that despite the incredible level of effort invested into it by some of the smartest people on the planet, it will inevitably be relegated to the dustbin of history. As a proprietary language and kernel, it can never compete long-term with open source alternatives. It's one thing to have a proprietary product , but for decades now proprietary languages have been a no-go for prac…

> Python, Julia, and Jupyter notebooks will simply wipe out all usage of Mathematica outside of a few esoteric fields. I'd wager that most of Mathematica's usage today, and in the past has been for those esoteric fields. MATLAB always had higher market share for numerical work. Mathematica's strength is in pure math. And nothing out there comes even close - not even SageMath. I wouldn't be surprised if all the pure m…

Why would Mathematica die? You think Stephen writes code today?

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#163

Post by 323 » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 9:15 PM UTC

spekcular wrote: post #144

323 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't know if Mathematica could have taken the place of Python if it was open sourced, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have, not with it's current lispy syntax. There is ton of empirical evidence that overt functional style is unnatural for the human mind, especially beginners. Which is why there is no large scale use of any such language.

What empirical evidence exists for that claim? I agree with it, but I'm mostly generalizing from own experience.

The fact that it's not wide spread is the empirical evidence.

> Clearly, there is an obstacle to the acceptance of FP. I think I know what it is. The functional paradigm is an unnatural way for human beings to think. People normally view the world as comprising objects. Nobody views the world as comprising functions, unless he is trained to do so.

https://richardeng.medium.com/fp-is-for-nerds-6ed1ca43bb34

> When it comes to functional programming, a lot of people start with, “But that’s totally unnatural!” Functional programming is compared to working “backwards” and some complain that it’s more about solving puzzles rather than working with code.

https://bulldogjob.pl/readme/functional-programming-does-it-...

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#164

Post by igouy » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 9:18 PM UTC

zaphar wrote: post #154

igouy wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like equivocation — Smalltalk is a programming language when we're using "Smalltalk" to mean Smalltalk the programming language and Smalltalk is a programming environment when we're using "Smalltalk" to mean Smalltalk the programming environment .

Either way it is still entirely valid to refer to Smalltalk as a programing language.

As-long-as you actually mean a "narrow definition of programming language" otherwise you're saying one thing while meaning another.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#165

Post by zaphar » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 9:19 PM UTC

igouy wrote: post #148

zaphar wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unfair and a far too narrow definition of programming language. Excel sits very squarely in the functional reactive language space. Just because most of it's users don't "know" they are programming and most of our common tools don't work with it doesn't change the fact that it has pretty much all of the building blocks that any programming language gives you. Are there domains where Excel is awkward to use? A…

The label of programming language goes to Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/overview/exc...

Excel has conditionals and several forms of map/reduce which stand in for loops all without relying on VBA. I stand by my statement that Excel qualifies in everyway that matters as a programming language.

They avoid that label because of their target audience but the label absolutely applies.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#166

Post by 7thaccount » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

bborud wrote: post #47

jiggawatts wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The saddest thing about Mathematica is that despite the incredible level of effort invested into it by some of the smartest people on the planet, it will inevitably be relegated to the dustbin of history. As a proprietary language and kernel, it can never compete long-term with open source alternatives. It's one thing to have a proprietary product , but for decades now proprietary languages have been a no-go for prac…

The first time I encountered Mathematica was 30 years ago, and I genuinely thought that within a decade this would be a tool that everyone would learn in college. A few years later, when working at the university I was a bit puzzled to find that while you could find things like Matlab on the various computer labs around campus (usually running some flavor of Unix), Mathematica was nowhere to be seen. Not even on the…

Mathematica is like $3k for a commercial license with the kitchen sink. Matlab can cost that much for like the database toolbox addon or the ML toolbox add-on. Mathematica is cheap in comparison.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#167

Post by tails4e » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

hgomersall wrote: post #67

bborud wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't lump Mathematica and Matlab together. Not least because Matlab is almost ubiquitous in academia and in engineering while Mathematica is extremely rare.

MATLAB seems to be rapidly being displaced by python is my observation.

The matlab licencing will be their downfall. Its the only licence we have in work that is per seat vs being token (floating) based, due to the cost of a floating license. So instead of having a tool any of our engineers can use, we have it assigned to a few engineers, and the others make do with octave or python. The sensible long term is to standardise on one language, and if it were not for certain toolboxes, that would be python or Julia, most likely. If the matlab licenses we had were floating, mathworks would get the same money, but would be more likely to keep our business, instead of pushing us to look into how best we can replace them.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#168

Post by 7thaccount » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

david38 wrote: post #162

BeetleB wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Python, Julia, and Jupyter notebooks will simply wipe out all usage of Mathematica outside of a few esoteric fields. I'd wager that most of Mathematica's usage today, and in the past has been for those esoteric fields. MATLAB always had higher market share for numerical work. Mathematica's strength is in pure math. And nothing out there comes even close - not even SageMath. I wouldn't be surprised if all the pure m…

Why would Mathematica die? You think Stephen writes code today?

He runs every aspect of the company. You can see his "live CEO'ing" videos which are very interesting. It's hard for companies like that to survive after the founder dies.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#169

Post by danachow » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 10:43 PM UTC

dguest wrote: post #42

sveme wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the perspective of a software developer. Neither Mathematica nor Matlab actually try to address this market. Both are languages for mathematicians, scientists and engineers and are still mostly unrivalled when it comes to domain knowledge. Python has the domain knowledge in the datascience domain, Julia has pretty good domain knowledge in OR. No one really comes close to capturing the symbolic computation doma…

Targeting the non-engineering crowd also means they are optimizing for a group that cares less about stability. That allows them to deprecate features, change interfaces, etc. An open source language is inevitably going to attract some maintainers who care about (or are paid to care about) keeping legacy code working. I haven't worked with Mathematica in years, though, so this is mostly speculation: how strictly do t…

> Targeting the non-engineering crowd also means they are optimizing for a group that cares less about stability.

Looking at how many buzzword bingo boards I could make with JavaScript frameworks de jour and even enterprise platforms like .NET I find this statement exactly backwards in practice.

> An open source language is inevitably going to attract some maintainers who care about (or are paid to care about) keeping legacy code working.

Over 20 years I’ve found this to be quite a mixed bag.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#170

Post by 7thaccount » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

dig1 wrote: post #36

n-e-w wrote: post #6

Rather than just bashing Stephen's personality and rehashing Cosma Shalizi's driveby on NKOS, can we try and focus on the technical accomplishment that Mathematica represents? It really is an astounding system. If you enjoy functional programming, the language is super expressive and productive. The integrated libraries are fantastic -- especially if you want to chain together different knowledge domains through a co…

I will second this. Wolfram (Stephen and company) marketing isn't spot on, but I'm yet going to find a system like Mathematica. People on HN forget that most of the places where Mathematica is intended to (R&D, math/physics departments, research facilities etc.) don't have tech people willing to battle with Python versions, packages, Jupyter installations, and all sort of nuances - they just want an installation they…

It is a TRS (term rewriting system) and very cool. I've posted on this before. There's not a whole lot on TRS, but there is some information out there.