Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

writings.stephenwolfram.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 125 posts

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#11

Post by Joel_Mckay »

breezybottom wrote: post #8
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wolfram did have Visual Studio API integration at one point, and it was useful reducing algorithmic symbolic design complexity. However, it was mostly the academically controversial assumptions that Mathematica makes that undermined its credibility in many faculties. For example, when digging into GNU Octave you will find many of its libraries were built on peer reviewed legacy code provably reproducible with prior a…

Most scientific fields have no problem using SAS or STATA or other black box code. I don't think that explains Mathematica's problems.

Indeed, likely negatively correlated with other behavioral phenomena =3

https://www.statista.com/chart/4111/do-europeans-wash-their-...

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#12

Post by coliveira »

orochimaaru wrote: post #6
Lucasoato wrote: post #2

I’ve used Mathematica at university, it’s so great! Creating fractals, animations and so on is so easy and intuitive. The problem though is that Wolfram is a walled garden. When you think about integrating it in an enterprise environment, you get hit by such high costs, it stops making sense. Imagine if they open sourced it, I feel like their products have so much utility, buried deep down Wolfram ecosystem and conve…

It doesn't make sense even for academia. Reproducibility is an issue and as we've seen with recent fraudulent claims in major publications - it's what is going to be used for verification of research. Many years back while in grad school I could not reproduce a result from a paper. Thankfully they had provided the data as public but not the code. I emailed the authors and got some matlab code back. My university didn…

Mathematica has a lot of clients in math and engineering. Traditionally these clients are not so concerned about software engineering issues you mention. What Mathematica offers also makes sense for small firms with a few engineers, because they can leverage their vast amount of ready to use functions and libraries. But I agree that for medium to large size companies it stops making sense.

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#13

Post by mackeye »

SilverElfin wrote: post #9

Does anyone use this outside of college classes? It looks so great in these demos but I never hear of companies using it.

it has the nicest calculator syntax (imho) among the tools i've tried (python/julia/array langs/matlab/etc...) with extensive docs for each function and a nice notebook interface, but i've never written a program in it that was longer than one expression.

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#14

Post by Vaslo »

I remember using it in my college days in the 90s.

People joining my company from academia usually know Mathematica along with Python or R.

When we tell them we don’t use Mathematica they are sometimes initially concerned. They are typically quite opinionated and I have yet to hear an employee complain about no longer having access to Mathematica. Or SPSS, SAS, or MiniTab for that matter.

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#15

Post by coliveira »

Lucasoato wrote: post #2

I’ve used Mathematica at university, it’s so great! Creating fractals, animations and so on is so easy and intuitive. The problem though is that Wolfram is a walled garden. When you think about integrating it in an enterprise environment, you get hit by such high costs, it stops making sense. Imagine if they open sourced it, I feel like their products have so much utility, buried deep down Wolfram ecosystem and conve…

I'm aways surprised that there's no open source language that provides everything you get with Wolfram language. For example, the level of pattern matching you can use when defining functions, as well as the high level of functional composition. It is like having a mix of APL, Lisp, and Prolog that is very productive to use.

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#16

Post by jjtheblunt »

afolkest wrote: post #10
SilverElfin wrote: post #9

Does anyone use this outside of college classes? It looks so great in these demos but I never hear of companies using it.

Not industry, but it's pretty popular among theoretical physics researchers.

I had it in an engineering inner sanctum of Apple. had used it since it came out in 1988 on campus in Illinois, and folks in Apple definitely knew it. Not sure who all was doing what with it.

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#17

Post by markgall »

afolkest wrote: post #10
SilverElfin wrote: post #9

Does anyone use this outside of college classes? It looks so great in these demos but I never hear of companies using it.

Not industry, but it's pretty popular among theoretical physics researchers.

Still nowadays? My impression is that in (pure) math it's lost most of its market share in the last few years. But maybe that's only in my circles.

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#18

Post by ahnick »

markgall wrote: post #17
afolkest wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not industry, but it's pretty popular among theoretical physics researchers.

Still nowadays? My impression is that in (pure) math it's lost most of its market share in the last few years. But maybe that's only in my circles.

what do you or others use instead?

Re: Wolfram Language and Mathematica version 15

#20

Post by TheRealPomax »

Lucasoato wrote: post #2

I’ve used Mathematica at university, it’s so great! Creating fractals, animations and so on is so easy and intuitive. The problem though is that Wolfram is a walled garden. When you think about integrating it in an enterprise environment, you get hit by such high costs, it stops making sense. Imagine if they open sourced it, I feel like their products have so much utility, buried deep down Wolfram ecosystem and conve…

IT doesn't even need to be open source, a walled garden that you can afford is perfectly fine. Someone's going to find the cracks in the wall anyway.

But a walled garden that costs $400 for personal use (we're ignoring yearly licensing, because f that noise) is utter nonsense, and the clearest sign you have no idea how to sell and then upsell products to users over the course of several years.

Post reply on HN