3 ms·

For fun I do knot theory and using Sage and snappy I feel there are more functions that are relevant to what I want to accomplish versus what is available for m

For fun I do knot theory and using Sage and snappy I feel there are more functions that are relevant to what I want to accomplish versus what is available for me in Mathematica. Also, Mathematica has a very terse and somewhat confusing syntax (I have used lisp before). On the other hand Python is a much simpler way for me to write code in. Lastly, it eliminates the price which if you aren't a University or a corporation you won't have access to those tools. This makes it easier for people to reproduce their work. EDIT: corrected typo

reikonomusha 8y ago
Even compared to Lisp, Mathematica code tends to end up being write-only code. Variable scoping semantics is weird, and cajoling Mathematica to do things in the order you want can be cumbersome. Mathematica is also just slow and buggy, especially when you have to use a license server. (Mathematica on macOS frequently beachballs.)
- zitterbewegung 8y ago
  Yea I had that feeling too. I wish they replaced the syntax with a python/ lua / javascript ripoff.
- whitten 8y ago
  Is there a BNF online for Mathematica? I know there is a project to do Mathematica-like things (computer algebra system) on github written in pure Python ( http://sympy.org/ http://sympy.org/ ). I've been told that Sage ( http://sagemath.org/ http://sagemath.org/ ) is Mathematica-like but uses Python as its programming language. There is also Maxima ( http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ ) which also has a close to Mathematica experience.