5 ms·

what is the adoption rate of wolfram? Are there any use cases outside of demonstration/education where python wouldn't work better?

• ethanbond 11y ago
  You're missing the point. If people demanded that Wolfram were open, then it would be either a) open or b) gone. The fact that it's neither of those would suggest that people don't want it open badly enough. Listing off projects that are open to show that people like open things is absolutely irrelevant.
  • ralmidani 11y ago
    You missed my point. The argument made by exolymph was users do not want freedom. I listed projects which are among the best and most popular in their class, in no small part due to their respect of users' freedom.
    • nickpsecurity 11y ago
      Were those Wolfram's users? And did they reject his app in favor of the free alternatives? I think your point is missing the point. The market of people who just want a solution to work and be easy to use is much, much larger than the market that explicitly demands BSD or GPL-style freedom. Wolfram serves the former. Makes more money that way, too.
  • thatcat 11y ago
    Right, I was trying to say that it's no more capable and seems objectively worse as a programming language. Don't get me wrong, it looks like a comprehensive learning library but why learn a language that isn't used for production software? People don't "like open things" because of marketing hype, they just tend use the most useful things. Collaboration in programming is a feature. If no other projects on github are written in "wolfram language", then learning to program doesn't really enable you to do as much.
  • JadeNB 11y ago
    > If people demanded that Wolfram were open, then it would be either a) open or b) gone. That seems a bit like saying that, if people demanded that North Korea were open, then it would be either (a) open or (b) gone. Of course, the lock-in to a software package is less than the lock-in to a country, but at a certain point it is not totally absurd to say that it is effectively impossible to switch.
    • ethanbond 11y ago
      You mean to say the lock in of a dictatorial military state is slightly more problematic than the lock in of downloading a different piece of software?
      • JadeNB 11y ago
        I guess this is sarcasm? I didn't say 'slightly'; certainly it is much more problematic. Obviously, the comparison is hyperbolic, but I don't think so much so that it is valueless. (On an uncharitable personal note, I'm not so sure that comparing Wolfram's own ambitions directly to a dictator's is all that exaggerated.)
  • yarou 11y ago
    I'm sure there are people in the past that wanted Windoze to become "open" (whatever that means, you don't specify in your argument). But Windoze is neither open nor gone. You're forgetting the third and much more realistic option: that people will come together and create a substitute that far surpasses the original, because of the naturally collaborative nature of free software. Wolfram the computational engine is a hosted solution, so there's very little point to "opening" that, business continuity reasons aside. Mathematica I don't know much about, but afaik serious engineers, mathematicians and physicists use MATLAB generally. There's more of a shift to using R and Julia nowadays but academics are notoriously stubborn when it comes to using software, regardless of its quality.