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Playing with Wolfram Playing Cards

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Re: Playing with Wolfram Playing Cards

#21

Post by tsomctl »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #16
tsomctl wrote: post #10

I'm always amazed by how expressive Mathematica is. Writing some of these expressions imperatively would be significantly more than one line.

These are mostly just API calls with arguments, with some simple lambdas. You can implement that in any language.

When I say Mathematica, I mean both the language and the functions they provide.

Re: Playing with Wolfram Playing Cards

#22

Post by sizzzzlerz »

maliker wrote: post #18
fjsolwmv wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are mostly just API calls with arguments, with some simple lambdas. You can implement that in any language.

I think the magic of Mathematica is the combination of (1) a huge collection of well-maintained CAS and math functions (2) great graphics and animation support (3) the notebook interface (which jupyter is catching up on fast) and (4) some of the best documentation in the industry. Modifying the Mathematica code after its written, however, is very tricky.

What you said plus the accuracy and precision to which results are computed. They're effectively limited only by the amount memory you have and your patience. And even patience isn't required unless you're calculating pi to trillions of digits. It's really fast.

Re: Playing with Wolfram Playing Cards

#23

Post by blt »

maliker wrote: post #18
fjsolwmv wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are mostly just API calls with arguments, with some simple lambdas. You can implement that in any language.

I think the magic of Mathematica is the combination of (1) a huge collection of well-maintained CAS and math functions (2) great graphics and animation support (3) the notebook interface (which jupyter is catching up on fast) and (4) some of the best documentation in the industry. Modifying the Mathematica code after its written, however, is very tricky.

Even if some of the components in Mathematica are not state-of-the-art, there's a huge synergy benefit from having everything together in one environment, using the same datatypes. I think that's the big benefit of Mathematica and Matlab. Python can match (or exceed) a lot of their capabilities but you spend all this time with package managers, converting data types, etc.

Re: Playing with Wolfram Playing Cards

#25

Post by anigbrowl »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #4

How plausible are animated versions of these in real life? What's the thinnest we can make a display+processor combo that can be powered by, say, the heat from my hands?

What if it's just a display plus a wireless receiver? SMartphones have not shrunk much over the last decade but that's cause of the constant pursuit of more functionality. I'd be quite interested to see how minimal they could go. I'll bet on playing card-size active displays within 10 years.

Re: Playing with Wolfram Playing Cards

#26

Post by jgamman »

disconcision wrote: post #8
ukoki wrote: post #7

Price: £4 — great! Shipping: £12 — nope!

shipping to canada is an utterly inexplicable 47 dollars, apparently not including taxes and duty

weird, same price to get to NZ! $5 for the cards, $47 for the shipping.... thx but I'll pass.

Re: Playing with Wolfram Playing Cards

#28

Post by godelski »

Adrock wrote: post #27
godelski wrote: post #19

If the OP is here, I found the cup on their site. It lets me put it in my cart http://store.wolfram.com/view/misc/index.str#heart-spikey-mu...

They put it back in the store after they saw my tweet :p

That's a lot of power. Use it wisely.

Re: Playing with Wolfram Playing Cards

#29

Post by cgmg »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #16
tsomctl wrote: post #10

I'm always amazed by how expressive Mathematica is. Writing some of these expressions imperatively would be significantly more than one line.

These are mostly just API calls with arguments, with some simple lambdas. You can implement that in any language.

Then again, all code is 'just' a bunch of RAM instructions, which can be implemented in any (Turing-complete) language. That doesn't tell us anything about how elegant or expressive it is.

Re: Playing with Wolfram Playing Cards

#30

Post by goldenkey »

amelius wrote: post #24
tsomctl wrote: post #10

I'm always amazed by how expressive Mathematica is. Writing some of these expressions imperatively would be significantly more than one line.

I'm surprised that they didn't choose a purely functional language for Mathematica.

Don't know why you are being downvoted. Mathematica is a pattern matching language. You set downvalues or upvalues usually. It does have functional syntax and functional methods but the base of it is pattern matching. That contributes to its rather poor performance and necessity to use Compile for C level perf. Most likely Wolfram was inspired by a couple other CAS being developed around the time he started developing Mathematica.
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