Mathematica 14
141–150 of 154 posts
Re: Mathematica 14
#142For me it’s such a shame as I would definitely use it much more often if the language and environment were closer to a typical coding workflow. It’s just such a hassle to have to use a standalone desktop engine, a weird editor, and a quirky language [at least at first] with few 3rd party libraries.
Re: Mathematica 14
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Mathcad has the notebook metaphor (calculations embedded in live formatted documents) by 1986. Mathcad predates Mathematica by 1 year. [1] [1] Mathcad 2.0 Ad from 1987, the oldest I have found in 10 min. https://books.google.es/books?id=sc4TnHAYBSUC&pg=PA42
Re: Mathematica 14
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I may have been incorrect because it's hard to know about everything and I have no issue to stand corrected, but please do not attack my logic by building strawmen. You could have simply stated the name of that predecessor, ideally with a link. The basis my comment for this was this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22278637 Unfortunately the Atlantic article is now paywalled.
Re: Mathematica 14
#145I enjoyed using Mathematica at work and grew quite fond of it. After the project concluded, I was keen to continue using it for personal projects, so I invested in the "Home" edition. Although it was not inexpensive, I quickly discovered it had certain limitations, such as a restricted number of computational kernels. There was also a limitation on how many personal computers I could use it on (even one at a time!).…
Re: Mathematica 14
#146Ask 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?
Wolfram would like to say that he invented Mathematica all by himself, but in its core, it is basically a lisp: everything is an expression, and mathematics are just transformations of the expressions. Afaik this makes it the best tool (conceptually and practically) for generic symbolic manipulations. For example, `1 + 1` in Mathematica is just syntactic sugar for `Plus[1, 1]`, and `a = 1` is `Set[a, 1]`. I am a PhD…
I got my theoretical physics Ph.D. in 1987. I’ve never met anyone who uses Mathematica, except to try it out a bit out of curiosity. Perhaps you’re referring to a particular research group?
Re: Mathematica 14
#147I remember Mathematica was included with the distribution of the OS for Raspberry Pi. I also remember it being so slow as to being unusable. I guess, you get what you pay for…
Re: Mathematica 14
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
He is not 'lying' he is 'envisioning future to motivate engineers'.
Re: Mathematica 14
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is Wolfram Derangement Syndrome?
> What is Wolfram Derangement Syndrome? He writes a lot about himself in every article and makes claims that others find excessive. Commenters get triggered by this and post about how annoying it is. These reactions are just as predictable and just as fixated on Wolfram himself as he is, and in that sense are guilty of the same thing. This repetitive dynamic is what I mean by Wolfram Derangement Syndrome. It has been…
I agree with the gist of your position, but the wording here is inflammatory (suggesting people are “triggered” rather than justifiably angry) and are obsessing over a man when in my experience his history of similar behavior goes back far longer and is exaggerated a lot more by his much stronger influence than the average hn commenter. I agree that it’s not interesting discussion, but people are largely trying to practice skepticism with a man who makes very exciting claims and sometimes isn’t being entirely honest about those claims or where they originated.
Basically, there is missing context that hn comments aren’t capturing that can help to understand this resentment towards him and your post here seems to be ignoring some of that context and equating the two sides when there is a large power disparity between them.
Edit: Also the choice to coin this phrase as a “derangement” feels inflammatory as well.
Re: Mathematica 14
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Well, there is https://github.com/WolframResearch/codeparser