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Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#51

Post by onikolas7 »

enriquto wrote: post #46
catchclose8919 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet it remains unrivalled in control engineering No, its usage is just declining slower in those areas because ppl don't want unnecessary change introducing unnecessary defects, esp since safety and reliability matters a lot for some equipments, and also engineers spend time on smth else than learning new languages and frameworks. In 20 years Matlab will be as legacy as Fortran is now, still some left but mostly fo…

> as legacy as Fortran is now what are you talking about? There's a lot of numerical code written (and actively developed) in Fortran today. If you are anywhere near numerical mathematics, you are running algorithms written in Fortran that somebody is maintaining.

'Lots' and 'legacy' are compatible.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#52

Post by coldtea »

jiggawatts wrote: post #8
n-e-w wrote: post #6

Rather than just bashing Stephen's personality and rehashing Cosma Shalizi's driveby on NKOS, can we try and focus on the technical accomplishment that Mathematica represents? It really is an astounding system. If you enjoy functional programming, the language is super expressive and productive. The integrated libraries are fantastic -- especially if you want to chain together different knowledge domains through a co…

The saddest thing about Mathematica is that despite the incredible level of effort invested into it by some of the smartest people on the planet, it will inevitably be relegated to the dustbin of history. As a proprietary language and kernel, it can never compete long-term with open source alternatives. It's one thing to have a proprietary product , but for decades now proprietary languages have been a no-go for prac…

>As a proprietary language and kernel, it can never compete long-term with open source alternatives.

What "open source alternatives"? There aren't any at this level of polish and maturity...

Meanwhile, whatever the "dustbin of history" does, we can continue keep using Mathematica just fine, for 20+ years, and 20+ more...

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#53

Post by bborud »

kgwgk wrote: post #32
catchclose8919 wrote: post #25

...open-source when? There's basically zero widely used programming languages that are not open-source, get to grips with this ffs. Esp. since Wolfram strives to be somewhat-general-purpose in a way (it's not smth like eg. K who's niche anyway) and having an open-source version is crucial in this segment. Hire some ppl (sales, mgmt, product etc.) who know how to make money from open-source (get some from RedHat, IBM…

> all this effort practically wasted Wasted as in providing a continuously improved product to the thousands of paying customers that fund this effort?

Wasted as in not fulfilling its potential even a little bit.

Mathematica is a very niche product. It isn't even very relevant in academia or in engineering. But it could have been if Wolfram hadn't hobbled it with unproductive restrictions. It could have had an audience of millions, and that audience would have brought it more value than a single company is capable of creating through a community.

Just look at Python. It is just a language. And a not particularly good one at that. ALL of its value comes from the community. Compared to Python, Mathematica isn't even a rounding error in terms of value created.

Imagine if Mathematica had been at the core of the last 15 years of data science, machine learning and whatnot? Imagine if the work and the value that went into the Python ecosystem had instead gone into Mathematica. Imagine if even just one of the many things Mathematica can potentially do well had become the go-to way for doing things.

But it didn't. Because Mathematica is fundamentally incompatible with the way communities work.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#54

Post by tableofzero »

n-e-w wrote: post #6

Rather than just bashing Stephen's personality and rehashing Cosma Shalizi's driveby on NKOS, can we try and focus on the technical accomplishment that Mathematica represents? It really is an astounding system. If you enjoy functional programming, the language is super expressive and productive. The integrated libraries are fantastic -- especially if you want to chain together different knowledge domains through a co…

>machine learning development has just stopped dead

From https://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/SummaryOfNewFea...

New in machine learning in 13.1 ...

ContentDetectorFunction (updated) — support for Information DimensionReducerFunction(updated) ▪ FeatureExtractorFunction(updated) FindClusters (updated) — support for fixed number of clusters and UpTo ClusterClassify(updated) ▪ ClusteringComponents(updated) Interpretable Machine Learning FeatureValueImpactPlot — plots the impact of a feature on a model result FeatureImpactPlot — plots the impact of each feature together CumulativeFeatureImpactPlot — plots the cumulative impact of each feature FeatureValueDependencyPlot — plots the result dependency on a feature value Network Layers » ReplicateLayer (updated) — support for integer arrays RandomArrayLayer (updated) — support for more statistical distribution AttentionLayer (updated) — support for dropout and local masking ElementwiseLayer (updated) — new activations "Mish" and "GELU" ThreadingLayer(updated) ▪ FunctionLayer(updated) Network Training » NetTrain (updated), LossFunction (updated) — support for multi-output and nonscalar loss Encoders & Decoders » "Image" (updated) — resampling and padding support "Class" (updated) — support for top-k and top-p sampling (nucleus sampling) Formats "ONNX" (updated) — export support for net operators

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#55

Post by kgwgk »

bborud wrote: post #53
kgwgk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all this effort practically wasted Wasted as in providing a continuously improved product to the thousands of paying customers that fund this effort?

Wasted as in not fulfilling its potential even a little bit. Mathematica is a very niche product. It isn't even very relevant in academia or in engineering. But it could have been if Wolfram hadn't hobbled it with unproductive restrictions. It could have had an audience of millions, and that audience would have brought it more value than a single company is capable of creating through a community. Just look at Python…

Just look at Python indeed. As you say it's a much worse language than many others that were equally available to anyone. And yet somehow it's at the the core of the last 15 years of data science, machine learning and whatnot.

If Mathematica had been open-sourced twenty years ago it wouldn't have taken the place of Python. It probably would be even more niche today - and worse.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#56

Post by epgui »

wiz21c wrote: post #10

How does R compare to Mathematica for data science ?

While R is not a great language, it's a great language to work with. It has a huge ecosystem of libraries and a very active community. It's unmatched for statistical analysis (even by python), so it does great for data science.

I'm sure Mathematica could be great too, but I'm not sure how big of a community it has.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#57

Post by mhh__ »

spoonjim wrote: post #7
n-e-w wrote: post #6

Rather than just bashing Stephen's personality and rehashing Cosma Shalizi's driveby on NKOS, can we try and focus on the technical accomplishment that Mathematica represents? It really is an astounding system. If you enjoy functional programming, the language is super expressive and productive. The integrated libraries are fantastic -- especially if you want to chain together different knowledge domains through a co…

I’ve come around on Stephen Wolfram. His puffery essentially hurts nobody besides perhaps those close to him, it’s easy to tune out, while his ambition has produced this really wonderful piece of software.

Hurts no one except the people he sues for working on his ideas faster than him

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#58

Post by ur-whale »

n-e-w wrote: post #6

Rather than just bashing Stephen's personality and rehashing Cosma Shalizi's driveby on NKOS, can we try and focus on the technical accomplishment that Mathematica represents? It really is an astounding system. If you enjoy functional programming, the language is super expressive and productive. The integrated libraries are fantastic -- especially if you want to chain together different knowledge domains through a co…

>rehashing Cosma Shalizi's driveby on NKOS

https://archive.ph/5GX2

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#59

Post by ur-whale »

jiggawatts wrote: post #8
n-e-w wrote: post #6

Rather than just bashing Stephen's personality and rehashing Cosma Shalizi's driveby on NKOS, can we try and focus on the technical accomplishment that Mathematica represents? It really is an astounding system. If you enjoy functional programming, the language is super expressive and productive. The integrated libraries are fantastic -- especially if you want to chain together different knowledge domains through a co…

The saddest thing about Mathematica is that despite the incredible level of effort invested into it by some of the smartest people on the planet, it will inevitably be relegated to the dustbin of history. As a proprietary language and kernel, it can never compete long-term with open source alternatives. It's one thing to have a proprietary product , but for decades now proprietary languages have been a no-go for prac…

> Python, Julia, and Jupyter notebooks will simply wipe out all usage of Mathematica outside of a few esoteric fields.

Yup, and all that's needed for the floodgates to open is for someone to write some sort of converter.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#60

Post by forgotpwd16 »

catchclose8919 wrote: post #26
dhdc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter example: MATLAB. Proprietory software, proprietory language, yet it remains unrivalled in control engineering, DSP, communication systems and so on. I genuinely hope that Octave can take off and trade blows with MATLAB face to face, but not sure if that will ever happen simply because of the amount of money MathWorks is pumping into developing toolboxes.

> yet it remains unrivalled in control engineering No, its usage is just declining slower in those areas because ppl don't want unnecessary change introducing unnecessary defects, esp since safety and reliability matters a lot for some equipments, and also engineers spend time on smth else than learning new languages and frameworks. In 20 years Matlab will be as legacy as Fortran is now, still some left but mostly fo…

>as legacy as Fortran is now

Disappointingly because modern Fortran is a nice language for numerical computing.

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