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Wolfram Programming Cloud

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Re: Wolfram Programming Cloud

#61

Post by akater »

mgraczyk wrote: post #23

I just asked a few Wolfram employees at SXSW what this is. They said, "It's Mathematica running on our servers with better data store and NLP integration." I also told them that the community seems confused about the product and that this page seemed to be mostly marketing bullshit. For some reason that made them really defensive, and they explained "It's pretty clear from the page what we're offering and the people…

Seems like lots of programmers despise advertising. It is an example of irrational religious behaviour, the very thing they claim to oppose.

How much of advanced technology was forgotten and eventually reinvented due to the lack of proper advertising?

Lisp and Smalltalk contained lots of ideas that made Wolfram products possible. Hackers who appreciate those ideas should probably be excited that a successful entrepreneur exists who makes larger audiences familiar with them at last.

Re: Wolfram Programming Cloud

#62

Post by tremols »

solipsism wrote: post #20

For me the real achievement of Wolfram is the visualization capabilities. The knowledge bases are nice if you happen to be interested in a domain that is represented, and they make for great (controlled) demonstrations, but Wolfram Alpha (which taps these same knowledge bases) really fails often when making arbitrary but reasonable queries. I think Wolframs visualization libs set a high bar, though, and I hope non-cl…

That´s why I think that it can only be useful if its integrable via APIs and/or iframe widgets. I fail to see how can one do standalone apps with it.

Re: Wolfram Programming Cloud

#63

Post by akater »

bananas wrote: post #55
taliesinb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People do not need huge languages with as much stuff as possible crammed into them. I think you should replace "people" with "systems programmers" in order not to express an opinion that will in time (if not already) prove to be anachronistic and narrow-minded. And the kinds of things we're "cramming in" (in reality, very slowly and methodically adding) have little to do with what you'd find in the languages you me…

So in conclusion, it's not a systems programming language. I think we got that. So to break it down, and this is how I understand it as a user, it's a collection of algorithms, Lego bricks of math and a library of data sources glued together with a functional REPL that is semantically represented as a notebook. Can you stick that on the web site somewhere without the millions of bullet points, marketoid spew and weas…

Maybe system programmers are “doing it wrong” now?

Even when you write a simple VGA driver you have to solve some equations. They are simple, so what does an average [good] C programmer does? He writes them down in his favourite inexpressive specialized language. Consequences: 1) a simple concept immediately becomes an incomprehensible mess; 2) approaches using more advanced ideas rarely get the proper attention because a system programmer is unable even to write them down, let alone reason about them and tweak them. There is no reason why a VGA driver for certain microprocessor could not be generated by a high-level language with the basic concepts behind it expressed more clearly, and nevertheless formally.

Re: Wolfram Programming Cloud

#64

Post by bane »

taliesinb wrote: post #41
bane wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem for them of course is that they exist in context to everything else in the world. So a "huge" innovation to their local context, because they just realized something everybody else knows, is just "meh" or "already tried" and determined to be uninteresting or useless. The problem for everybody else is that there's just enough interesting in Wolfram's output to make it hard to dismiss outright.

> determined to be uninteresting or useless. Your thesis seems to be that we're so naive that we re-invent discarded or failed ideas and call them innovations. Can you give an example? I'll give you just a two counter-examples off the top of my head. 1. Our frontend uses what turned out to be functional reactive programming to accomplish seamlessly interactive UI. And FRP is widely considered to be a Good Idea. 2. We…

I'm willing to admit I lack imagination or vision here. I think the lack of killer examples to sort of show me the way here is hobbling me. Wolfram's demo video was interesting but viewed to me more like a demo of a fancy calculator than a path towards a new way of doing development. I have a drawer full of fancy calculators I don't use because my need to "compute" things in such a general sense as presented here is pretty rare, or is so narrow in scope that I can usually just go hunt down the relevant information myself in less time than it takes to learn all of this new stuff.

I'll probably wait on the sidelines for a while and wait to see what kinds of things come out of this work.

Please take my skepticism as a healthy challenge and not as dismissal. The day the Wolfram language shows me something that fundamentally transforms some aspect of my life I didn't know needed transforming, I'll sign up.

Re: Wolfram Programming Cloud

#65

Post by bananas »

akater wrote: post #63
bananas wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in conclusion, it's not a systems programming language. I think we got that. So to break it down, and this is how I understand it as a user, it's a collection of algorithms, Lego bricks of math and a library of data sources glued together with a functional REPL that is semantically represented as a notebook. Can you stick that on the web site somewhere without the millions of bullet points, marketoid spew and weas…

Maybe system programmers are “doing it wrong” now? Even when you write a simple VGA driver you have to solve some equations. They are simple, so what does an average [good] C programmer does? He writes them down in his favourite inexpressive specialized language. Consequences: 1) a simple concept immediately becomes an incomprehensible mess; 2) approaches using more advanced ideas rarely get the proper attention beca…

Agree with you entirely (especially after recently writing an SSDP and UPnP stack) but unfortunately the academics with all the supposed solutions have managed to deliver nothing with any momentum, so we're stuck with a 40 year old programming system and 30 year old abstractions.

Then again, you know what? It works pretty well so perhaps we're not doing it wrong

Re: Wolfram Programming Cloud

#66

Post by rlamby »

As a long time Mathematica (MMA) user I can say I am confused and bemused as to where Wolfram is heading. They have their fingers in so many pies its hard to work out whats going on.

Recent Wolfram marketing on MMA/Wolfram language seem to be aimed at consumer, Facebook and Hedgefund users rather than their traditional base in the Sciences and Engineering.

There are plenty of pretty short examples, but the MMA kernel grinds to a halt when pushing into larger problem sets. The CUDA and Parallel processor commands are limited and haven't really been updated in the last few years (pushing you back to other tools).

Developing on Workbench is anything but a joy and without even considering speed one is better off developing on a regular programming IDE for programs requiring multiple libraries. The notebook interface just doesn't handle large programs well.

While functional programming is wonderful for some things, it is incredibly hard to debug with the current tools and effectively provides a level of self obfuscation when used exclusively.

The Computable Document Format (CDF) is a nice idea but the licensing terms are too restrictive for any commercial work. At present CDF also has a pretty slow, buggy interpreter.

All that said MMA is a great tool for early prototyping and a wide range of analysis, you just need to consider switching to something else if you get over several pages of code or utilize more than a few of your own libraries.

Like others have said, there are lots of tools out there and a combination of them will still be needed to produce the best outcome after the release of MMA10 and the Wolfram Cloud.

Re: Wolfram Programming Cloud

#67

Post by darkarmani »

akater wrote: post #61
mgraczyk wrote: post #23

I just asked a few Wolfram employees at SXSW what this is. They said, "It's Mathematica running on our servers with better data store and NLP integration." I also told them that the community seems confused about the product and that this page seemed to be mostly marketing bullshit. For some reason that made them really defensive, and they explained "It's pretty clear from the page what we're offering and the people…

Seems like lots of programmers despise advertising. It is an example of irrational religious behaviour, the very thing they claim to oppose. How much of advanced technology was forgotten and eventually reinvented due to the lack of proper advertising? Lisp and Smalltalk contained lots of ideas that made Wolfram products possible. Hackers who appreciate those ideas should probably be excited that a successful entrepre…

> Seems like lots of programmers despise advertising. It is an example of irrational religious behaviour, the very thing they claim to oppose.

What is irrational or religious about despising attempts designed to obfuscate meaning? Good advertising would communicate clearly. If you can find programmers that also despise non-deceptive advertising you might be onto something.

Re: Wolfram Programming Cloud

#68

Post by lstroud »

taliesinb wrote: post #53
anaphor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the idea of building as much as possible into the language is old and has repeatedly failed. Languages like PL/1, APL, and to a lesser extent PHP have all tried and failed at this. People do not need huge languages with as much stuff as possible crammed into them. What they need are languages where you can be reasonably certain, and maybe even formally prove things about the execution of your code (putting every…

> People do not need huge languages with as much stuff as possible crammed into them. I think you should replace "people" with "systems programmers" in order not to express an opinion that will in time (if not already) prove to be anachronistic and narrow-minded. And the kinds of things we're "cramming in" (in reality, very slowly and methodically adding) have little to do with what you'd find in the languages you me…

Out of curiosity, would you classify this in the 4GL camp?

Not to denigrate the technology and functionality that the Wolfram language is exposing, but it sure sounds a lot like the 4GL pitches from the 90s. Is that a fair comparison?

Re: Wolfram Programming Cloud

#69

Post by vincetogo »

taliesinb wrote: post #45
vincetogo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite Alpha goof is it interpreting the Planck mass as Max Planck's weight.

That's fun, but seems to be fixed: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=+Planck+mass

It shows up in more complex queries: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=+Planck+mass%2Ftau+mass

Re: Wolfram Programming Cloud

#70

Post by darrellp »

I think that Mathematica is innovative and love Mathematica. What I object to is that pretty much everything I've seen in the ads is touted as "revolutionary" when, in fact, it pretty much seems like a small upgrade to Mathematica as we know it today. One of the breathless accolades I read touted the "new" way you could type a one liner and have a video of an outline from your cam. Very nice, but I went to my old version of Mathematica, typed in the exact same thing with the exact same results. So while it's cool that Mathematica/Wolfram Language can do this, at this point in time it's hard to see where the new, circa 2014 revolution is coming about.
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