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Mathematica 14

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Mathematica 14

#81

Post by baq »

jampekka wrote: post #72
wolverine876 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but what are the tradeoffs for Mathematica?

Mathematica has the best CAD capabilities for many/most tasks, but the language is rather horrible. E.g. code can not be commented, the program state is difficult to manage or even reset, it's very tied to the Mathematica "notebook". And it's quite idiosyncratic. I sometimes have to use it where Sympy fails, and every time it's almost constant WTF. And it's very proprietary and very expensive.

Note it's free on the raspberry pi!

https://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/

If you have one collecting dust in a drawer, I'd heartily recommend checking it out.

Re: Mathematica 14

#82

Post by [deleted] »

noneoftheabove wrote: post #54
mr_mitm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's noteworthy that Mathematica invented the notebook UI that Jupyter ended up popularizing. It has some strengths, but since its syntax highlighting is coupled to the kernel state it didn't have an undo function for the longest time. Also as big vim fan it's disappointing to not being able to use your favorite editor.

No. Incorrect. There was a precursor that had the idea Of notebook but didn’t call it that. By your logic Wolfram invented symbolic computation, Computational complexity and many other things. Let’s Not go down that route please.

[deleted]

Re: Mathematica 14

#83

Post by sampo »

jampekka wrote: post #72
wolverine876 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but what are the tradeoffs for Mathematica?

Mathematica has the best CAD capabilities for many/most tasks, but the language is rather horrible. E.g. code can not be commented, the program state is difficult to manage or even reset, it's very tied to the Mathematica "notebook". And it's quite idiosyncratic. I sometimes have to use it where Sympy fails, and every time it's almost constant WTF. And it's very proprietary and very expensive.

> code can not be commented

Mathematica has a C-like syntax for comments

    (* this is a comment *)
but it doesn't have C++ style comments

    // This is a C++ comment

Re: Mathematica 14

#84

Post by [deleted] »

agumonkey wrote: post #79
zvmaz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It maybe be irrational, but the absolute arrogance of the author is off-putting and makes me reluctant to use any of his creations (which may be great I don't deny). I may have developed a heuristic that tells me to be very suspicious of people that are so sure and full of themselves as to become dangerous because they can be spectacularly wrong. It may have stemmed from the pandemic... So, sure, you are smart and cl…

I never really got what made people so allergic to Wolfram. After the many outrages online I tried to dig and I never found anything shocking. There's not too many mention of "I" or too many self flattering hyperboles.. so I don't know.

[deleted]

Re: Mathematica 14

#85

Post by nextaccountic »

wolverine876 wrote: post #64
markusstrasser wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people getting hung up on his hubris? If his megalomania gives us Mathematica who cares. It's a phenomenal accomplishment. It can, out of the box, do hundreds of things that'd take you weeks in python/julia/etc or would be entirely impossible for most in other systems.

> Why are people getting hung up on his hubris? If his megalomania gives us Mathematica who cares. We've had some bad results taking that approach recently - which we really should have anticipated, with millenia-old stories warning us about it. For one thing, megalomaniacs tend to be frauds (perhaps because, to be a megalomaniac, it's necessary to lie to yourself); maybe Mathematica will turn out to be the FTX, or T…

> megalomaniacs tend to be frauds

Eeeh. Scott Aaronson review [0] and Cosma Shali's review [1] of NKS kinds of points to this direction, so he may well be a fraud. The plagiarism case regarding rule 110 (and attempts to hide this through NDA and lawsuits [2]) doesn't do him any favors, either. Indeed maybe the biggest problem of Wolfram isn't the megalomany per se, but the total unwillingness to give credit to others and cite their damn papers. Wolfram simply isn't in the business of sharing his bibliography, which is problematic for a scientist.

However, the newer Wolfram Physics [3] [4] looks so damn promising that I'm willing to entertain possible quackery. I mean it surely has many ideas regarding how a digital universe would look like; he may be all wrong in the details but his ideas look important contributions to me. I sometimes think what's like to be at the frontier of science; today we take relativity (for example) for granted but there was a time when it was up in the air. When I read Wolfram's stuff stuff I just think this could very well be true, and while there's absolutely no evidence for it the conjectures all make sense.

[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0206089

[1] http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13961947

[3] https://www.wolframphysics.org/

[4] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-h...

Re: Mathematica 14

#86

Post by jan_Inkepa »

rayxi271828 wrote: post #5

Ask HN: I've never met someone who uses Mathematica, I imagine its users are even rarer outside the academic circles. I've met many who use Matlab, R, Python, Excel, etc. If you're using it, what are you using it for exactly? In what way is it irreplaceable by other tools out there, if at all?

I used it a lot in maths grad school for manipulating wretchedly large algebraic expressions. Just maths notation being well-supported and the interface for editing everything being nice made it the best tool for me. And it wasn't hard to use, not at all - bearing in mind I was just doing algebra. (This was all more than ten years ago).

Re: Mathematica 14

#87

Post by 3abiton »

markusstrasser wrote: post #49
dang wrote: post #120

[stub for offtopicness]

Why are people getting hung up on his hubris? If his megalomania gives us Mathematica who cares. It's a phenomenal accomplishment. It can, out of the box, do hundreds of things that'd take you weeks in python/julia/etc or would be entirely impossible for most in other systems.

I heard this before, but never asked, what is so special about Mathematica that cannot be done by other softwares?

Re: Mathematica 14

#88

Post by Qem »

agumonkey wrote: post #79
zvmaz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It maybe be irrational, but the absolute arrogance of the author is off-putting and makes me reluctant to use any of his creations (which may be great I don't deny). I may have developed a heuristic that tells me to be very suspicious of people that are so sure and full of themselves as to become dangerous because they can be spectacularly wrong. It may have stemmed from the pandemic... So, sure, you are smart and cl…

I never really got what made people so allergic to Wolfram. After the many outrages online I tried to dig and I never found anything shocking. There's not too many mention of "I" or too many self flattering hyperboles.. so I don't know.

> I never really got what made people so allergic to Wolfram. After the many outrages online I tried to dig and I never found anything shocking

For me it was trying to pass his employees work as if it were his own, through NDAs and lawsuits, like happened in this case:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110 https://www.complex-systems.com/abstracts/v15_i01_a01/

We only know this case because the employee fought back. Makes one wonder how many similar cases happened but never surfaced.

Re: Mathematica 14

#89

Post by glimshe »

zvmaz wrote: post #77
dang wrote: post #120

[stub for offtopicness]

It maybe be irrational, but the absolute arrogance of the author is off-putting and makes me reluctant to use any of his creations (which may be great I don't deny). I may have developed a heuristic that tells me to be very suspicious of people that are so sure and full of themselves as to become dangerous because they can be spectacularly wrong. It may have stemmed from the pandemic... So, sure, you are smart and cl…

Arrogance is not only annoying, but also indicative that the person isn't as good as they appear. Wolfram is different, however. Yeah, he's probably insecure due to some childhood-related reason, but don't let this trick you into believing he's just some random Internet person full of hot air. This guy is a genius and a fantastic explainer. His arrogance is just one of his well-documented personality quirks.

Just look the other way and try to learn something from him.

Re: Mathematica 14

#90

Post by tromp »

sampo wrote: post #83
jampekka wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematica has the best CAD capabilities for many/most tasks, but the language is rather horrible. E.g. code can not be commented, the program state is difficult to manage or even reset, it's very tied to the Mathematica "notebook". And it's quite idiosyncratic. I sometimes have to use it where Sympy fails, and every time it's almost constant WTF. And it's very proprietary and very expensive.

> code can not be commented Mathematica has a C-like syntax for comments (* this is a comment *) but it doesn't have C++ style comments // This is a C++ comment

Actually those are Pascal-like comments. Pascal uses (* ... *) for arbitrary comments as well as { ... } for single line comments.
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