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Mathematica 14

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Mathematica 14

#111

Post by jhbadger »

nextaccountic wrote: post #80
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 don't care about arrogance, but closed source languages have no place in the 21th century IMO. I could use it if they open sourced at least the compiler

There's Mathics, a subset of the language implemented in Python, but unfortunately after the main author of that was hired by Wolfram, the project seems to have basically died. Still fun for what it is.

https://mathics.org/

Re: Mathematica 14

#112

Post by me_me_me »

jhbadger wrote: post #110
zamadatix wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematica has been publicly available for 35 years now, this is the 14th release. The tool has worked extremely well and been tangible for decades, with the value during that period being in the customer's direct use. In what ways does this remind you of FTX or Tesla auto-pilot?

Well, he claimed that Mathematica, particularly cellular automata implemented in Mathematica, would bring about "A New Kind of Science" as described in his thick book of that name. It didn't of course -- people like to still play with cellular automata like The Game of Life (or my favorite, Wireworld), but no revolution in science involving CAs has occurred. The whole thing was a marketing ploy for Mathematica disgui…

That's still not very adequate comparison.

Musk has been promising self driving for... what 10 years now?

Hyping a working tool like Mathematica that will bring a revolution is a vague hope rather than a concrete promise of outcome.

Re: Mathematica 14

#113

Post by zamadatix »

jhbadger wrote: post #110
zamadatix wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematica has been publicly available for 35 years now, this is the 14th release. The tool has worked extremely well and been tangible for decades, with the value during that period being in the customer's direct use. In what ways does this remind you of FTX or Tesla auto-pilot?

Well, he claimed that Mathematica, particularly cellular automata implemented in Mathematica, would bring about "A New Kind of Science" as described in his thick book of that name. It didn't of course -- people like to still play with cellular automata like The Game of Life (or my favorite, Wireworld), but no revolution in science involving CAs has occurred. The whole thing was a marketing ploy for Mathematica disgui…

Wolfram does lots of wacky stuff but how does it make Mathematica any less tangibly useful today? He can want to use Mathematica as part of eradicating cancer using toilet brushes and it would still not change that Mathematica is and has been an extremely useful piece of software for decades. The point isn't every single thought he has is gospel revolution it's that Mathematica is already a delivered value.

Re: Mathematica 14

#114

Post by reikonomusha »

Smaug123 wrote: post #107
tempodox wrote: post #96

Mathematica is what I thought a computer would be like before I could really use one: A tool for arithmetics and math. Instead we get text processing, kitten photos and porn videos. Not that I have anything against either of these, but it was still a mild shock to find that the `ln` command does not, by a long shot, compute the natural logarithm in Unix. OK, even Mathematica makes me alias `Ln` to `Log`. So much for…

`Ln` isn't a built-in (and is syntax-highlighted as "undefined"), and searching the docs for "Ln" (or looking up the symbol with F12) gives as the first hit "Log: Log[z] gives the natural logarithm of z (logarithm to base e)". Given that in my experience mathematicians use "log" rather than "ln" (who uses base-10 logs in mathematics anyway?), is there any possible way they could have made this less surprising?

> Who uses base-10 logs in mathematics anyway?

Any applied mathematician working with decibels (as in acoustics, electronics, optics, ...), for example.

Re: Mathematica 14

#115

Post by wolverine876 »

nextaccountic wrote: post #85
wolverine876 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Thanks for introducing some knowledge and fact to the discussion.

> However, the newer Wolfram Physics [3] [4] looks so damn promising that I'm willing to entertain possible quackery.

I don't know him, and clearly you know quite a bit. Still, that tradeoff is exactly where we've made our mistakes - the temptation of that payoff.

Re: Mathematica 14

#116

Post by fooker »

me_me_me wrote: post #112
jhbadger wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, he claimed that Mathematica, particularly cellular automata implemented in Mathematica, would bring about "A New Kind of Science" as described in his thick book of that name. It didn't of course -- people like to still play with cellular automata like The Game of Life (or my favorite, Wireworld), but no revolution in science involving CAs has occurred. The whole thing was a marketing ploy for Mathematica disgui…

That's still not very adequate comparison. Musk has been promising self driving for... what 10 years now? Hyping a working tool like Mathematica that will bring a revolution is a vague hope rather than a concrete promise of outcome.

Musk doesn't do this for you.

Notice the pattern, he does it to attract the kind of engineers attracted to solving 'unsolvable' problems.

Whether that's a good strategy is up in the air.

Re: Mathematica 14

#117

Post by bwanab »

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 had thought of him as megalomaniac, but I recently heard him do a two hour podcast on the Joe Walker Podcast (formerly Jolly Swagman). He came off as relatively normal for someone who earned a Ph.D. in particle physics from Caltech at the ripe age of 20.

Re: Mathematica 14

#118

Post by forgotpwd16 »

phonon wrote: post #104
clbrmbr wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should give it a spin. It’s an incredibly comprehensive Computer Algebra System with all the batteries included…. No, with a small nuclear reactor in the box. I’m just sad that I don’t have access anymore after college, being too cheap to pay for a license.

It comes free with a Raspberry Pi. https://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/

For trying and basic work can also use a free Wolfram Cloud account.

Re: Mathematica 14

#119

Post by abdullahkhalids »

3abiton wrote: post #87
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.

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

- Far better language design, actually designed from ground up to write Mathematics in, rather than hacked in later.

- Specially, the language supports symbolic computation natively. In a lot of software, you have to declare symbols as symbolic variables before using them. In Mathematica, you don't have to deal with this nonsense.

- A library of both symbolic and numerical algorithms that is far far far better than any other library out there. Especially its outstanding how much symbolic computation algorithms are built in. Fairly fast numerical algorithms as well. Best of all, Mathematica guesses the best algorithm to use in a particular situation with frightening accuracy.

- A lot of Maths is just built in. Example: A number of common Groups are just there for you to immediately start playing with.

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