Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't done a ton with Mathematica, but my understanding is that it allows for more powerful and abstract programming than something like Jupyter. Am I wrong? I would think that Wolfram isn't trying to compete in the data science space, but more in the more abstract academic space.
I used it more than a decade ago, as a grad student. It was magic with symbolic algebra. It was also a solid general purpose language, great for audio and graphics (although probably not realtime). But the set of libraries for it will never compete with those of an open language.
wxMaxima is the most popular frontend for the software: http://wxmaxima-developers.github.io/wxmaxima/
I'm also taking the opportunity include a video that I made using to demonstrate my UI for it: https://peertube.functional.cafe/w/qnx1onPEx9LCtDP3wFqjWz