Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica • Hacker News Board

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#71

Post by kgwgk » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 10:19 AM UTC

NavinF wrote: post #66

kgwgk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mathematica has always been a lovely product. But it has also always been impractical due to its pricing and restrictions. Whether you are in academia, a working professional or just a hobbyist. [...] There is no reason to believe this will change. The hobbyist license is less than $200 per year. What kind of pricing would make it practical for you? [Edit: The student license (non-expiring) was $139 twenty years ag…

It has to be low enough for mass adoption. I’d guess $2/mo or $10/yr. I paid for the $200 license back in high school 10 years ago and it was absolutely amazing; Really ahead of its time and well worth the money. But today as a software engineer the only feature I’m missing in Python is the ability to run natural language expressions in the middle of my code. Besides that, Python is far superior thanks to the communi…

For the record, the question was not about getting "mass adoption" but about the price that would make such a lovely product worth it for a hobbyist. Most hobbys are much more expensive than $10 per year!

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#72

Post by catchclose8919 » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 10:24 AM UTC

tableofzero wrote: post #64

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…

By far the most popular programming language in the world is propriatary -- Excel.

There's many open-source alternatives to Excel. Rarely used, but it settles any fear of lock in.

This also made the area palatable for other commercial competitors to enter the space - Google-sheets drive A TON of enterprise org work nowadays.

You could say that open-source alternatives immensely popularized spreadsheets and resulted in the very nice ecosystem we have now.

Sure, heave finance user stick to MS Excell because MS is pressured to cater very well to their needs, else they will move away to other free or paid alternatives.

Also, there's a reason why multi-dimensional spreadheets are not more popular despite solving so many problems of regular spreadheets: all are proprietary and very different one from another - you probably pick smth like Quantrix (https://quantrix.com/products/quantrix-modeler/), and you'd get insane prices and 100% lock-in... better stick to Excell and/or its open-source and/or free alternatives despite being a worse tool :)

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#73

Post by bborud » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 10:25 AM UTC

kgwgk wrote: post #62

bborud wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time I encountered Mathematica was 30 years ago, and I genuinely thought that within a decade this would be a tool that everyone would learn in college. A few years later, when working at the university I was a bit puzzled to find that while you could find things like Matlab on the various computer labs around campus (usually running some flavor of Unix), Mathematica was nowhere to be seen. Not even on the…

> Mathematica has always been a lovely product. But it has also always been impractical due to its pricing and restrictions. Whether you are in academia, a working professional or just a hobbyist. [...] There is no reason to believe this will change. The hobbyist license is less than $200 per year. What kind of pricing would make it practical for you? [Edit: The student license (non-expiring) was $139 twenty years ag…

In terms of price: a price point that means a significant portion of my peers will also pay for Mathematica without too much hesitation. The value proposition changes radically when a tool is something "everyone" runs or which everyone can afford to run.

But pricing isn't the only problem here. The licensing model would have to be far more permissive. Plus I think any language that hopes to be successful would at least require an open source compiler, runtime and standard library.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#74

Post by kgwgk » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

catchclose8919 wrote: post #70

kgwgk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It probably would be even more niche today - and worse. Maybe, but a better successor would've evolved out of it. Matlab had Octave as an open source alternative. Not used much, but it inspired the creation of Julia. Based on how fast it's evolving Julia will be the superpowered-grandson-of-Matlab :) The Mathematica/Wolfram bloodline will unfortunately die off at some point... lots of ideas will be lost and time wi…

> Maybe, but a better successor would've evolved out of it.

> Matlab had Octave as an open source alternative. Not used much, but it inspired the creation of Julia. Based on how fast it's evolving Julia will be the superpowered-grandson-of-Matlab :)

That's a very contrived argument!

If Matlab has inspired the development of other products without ceasing to exist so can (maybe has) Mathematica.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#75

Post by capableweb » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 10:28 AM UTC

tableofzero wrote: post #64

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…

By far the most popular programming language in the world is propriatary -- Excel.

Excel is built with programming language and can certainly be used as one, but that doesn't mean it is one. It's also a bit anal to classify Excel as a programming language, most people would say spreadsheets are a tool, where you could write programs, but again, doesn't mean it's a programming language. At most, I'd give you that Excel is a tool that can do "visual programming", but that's far of from being a "programming language".

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#76

Post by jansan » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 10:30 AM UTC

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.

People have been saying this about Windows for the last 35 years.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#77

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 10:30 AM UTC

bborud wrote: post #68

kgwgk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Python ended up at the core of data science because it was capable of serving a community. A community that produced comprehensive computational libraries, which, combined with the low threshold for getting started, made it more accessible for an audience that is interested in computation first and programming second. This is largely the same audience as for tools like Matlab and Mathematica. And to serve that market…

[deleted]

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#78

Post by n-e-w » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 10:31 AM UTC

tableofzero wrote: post #54

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) Inter…

Three of their best ML engineers /devs left in the last 12 months or so. The backend for anything deep-learning is MXNet...which is essentially a non-starter these days vs PyTorch or TensorFlow. All these functions you cite are very low level updates not real feature updates.

I would say in 2018-2019 the ML / Deep learning stack was actually very impressive compared with what was available in FOSS. Now -- it's languishing. Badly.

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#79

Post by jiggawatts » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 10:33 AM UTC

kgwgk wrote: post #62

bborud wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time I encountered Mathematica was 30 years ago, and I genuinely thought that within a decade this would be a tool that everyone would learn in college. A few years later, when working at the university I was a bit puzzled to find that while you could find things like Matlab on the various computer labs around campus (usually running some flavor of Unix), Mathematica was nowhere to be seen. Not even on the…

> Mathematica has always been a lovely product. But it has also always been impractical due to its pricing and restrictions. Whether you are in academia, a working professional or just a hobbyist. [...] There is no reason to believe this will change. The hobbyist license is less than $200 per year. What kind of pricing would make it practical for you? [Edit: The student license (non-expiring) was $139 twenty years ag…

Once in a blue moon I use Mathematica as an overpowered calculator. I keep it around partly for nostalgia, and partly because it makes me feel like a true computer scientist.

Every time I use it, I have this mental image of using a 500 ton press to crack a walnut. It's ludicrous overkill, but it brings a certain satisfaction to be able to use arbitrary precision maths when I don't need to, and use nonlinear fits for graphs where nobody looking at the result will even begin to appreciate the difference it makes.

This is the problem -- there is a "long tail" of people like me that have used Mathematica at university that are loathe to let go, but can't really justify the ongoing price.

This is why there are free editions of many paid tools. IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio have free "community editions", for example. More importantly, the build tools are generally free.

Even eye-wateringly expensive enterprise products with "call us" pricing have free editions! For example, VMware ESXi, Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server all do.

Wolfram is one of the last all-proprietary, no-free option, no open-source holdouts, especially in the space of "general purpose languages".

Re: Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

#80

Post by kgwgk » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 10:35 AM UTC

bborud wrote: post #68

kgwgk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Python ended up at the core of data science because it was capable of serving a community. A community that produced comprehensive computational libraries, which, combined with the low threshold for getting started, made it more accessible for an audience that is interested in computation first and programming second. This is largely the same audience as for tools like Matlab and Mathematica. And to serve that market…

> Whether or not Mathematica is a better language is irrelevant as it doesn't have the properties required a large community contributing value for free.

The issue is that other languages which were better and more appropriate for scientific computing _had_ those properties. Or maybe these properties are very specific to python and then an open-source mathematica wouldn't have made a difference either.

> And it isn't like Mathworks didn't miss the boat too. But they are still an order of magnitude more successful than Wolfram Research.

Depends on your definition of success, of course. You focus on adoption but that's not the only goal. The company is an order of magnitude larger but that doesn't make the product an order of magnitude better.