6 ms·

It's proprietary. Do we need another Flash?

by praptak 7y ago

simonh 7y ago
If you don't need it, don't use it.
- jimhefferon 7y ago
  Fair enough, but it is helpful for someone to bring up the point about it being closed.
- praptak 7y ago
  I'm just pointing out that proprietary languages tend to die outside proprietary environments.
  - unlinked_dll 7y ago
    Matlab and Java seem to be doing alright
    - qchris 7y ago
      Both of them certainly have their uses, but especially for MATLAB, are they? I'm working as an engineer in academia right now, and even with all the legacy holdover of MATLAB, many people I know (including almost every undergrad project I've helped with) are either using R or Python, and I know I don't go for it unless I'm absolutely forced. And that's nothing to say for the researchers whose eyes light up upon hearing of Julia. Few of those people seem like they'll be advocates for buying expensive seat licenses if they become PIs down the line or join industry 5-10 years from now. Mathematica seems a little different because I don't believe there's currently a viable alternative, let alone a commonly used one.
      - unlinked_dll 7y ago
        I mean yea, MATLAB is indispensable for the working engineer in controls or signal processing. Python is coming in vogue because of ML applications, but it's primarily used in the wild for scripting together builds and tests, which often are used for testing data generated by MATLAB models. I've never seen a workplace use R or Julia or list them on a job posting outside data science or academia. Julia in particular is missing major components that make it useable, particularly in signal processing. MATLAB also has the advantage of being useful as a CLI calculator for linear algebra, which is how a lot of engineers use it in their day to day. The REPL's of python and Julia are far too slow for that kind of work, frankly. Especially Julia. the JIT takes forever to warm up. It really doesn't fit into my workflow at all, and I've tried to force it. Also, Simulink.
        qchris 7y ago
        Your point about Simulink is fair--even the Octave version, Xcos, doesn't provide much of an alternative for doing good controls simulations. And while I agree that the Julia's JIT is pretty slow to come up, if I'm doing a lot of linear algebra work, I've typically just left a dedicated terminal open for it. I also haven't had much of a real speed issue with using a REPL or notebook, unless the data sets are unreasonably large. I think I disagree with your take on Python's most common uses, as well as the implication that it is just now "coming into vogue." I'm by nobody's measure a Pythonista, but my experience has been that it gets pulled in almost anywhere it can, from scripting to app development to scientific computing. I am curious about your experience with signal processing, though--how have you seen MATLAB used where Python wasn't or couldn't? I haven't done much in that area since undergrad/internships, and there I would have said that LabView was much more prevalent as a tool, or even Labwindows. At least for many of the common functions like FFT, I don't recall MATLAB being any more common than any other language for that sort of thing (although as I said, my experience there might not be representative).
        unlinked_dll 7y ago
        I meant python coming into vogue for signal processing/controls, sorry if that was unclear. And that's mostly anecdotal. There's a lot of internal tooling around MATLAB that would take a lot of work to replace with Python. Like for example, I know a company that has a verilog compiler for their matlab models. That's not going to be rewritten for python. MATLAB toolchains are also easy to maintain, since they're so damn expensive and locked down. Compared to python, which... isn't always straightforward. And like I said before, MATLAB is just a fancy and expensive calculator. It's number crunch first, script second, and language third. Julia and python have a different balance, at least to me. If I'm doing something quick and dirty, reaching for MATLAB is the absolute fastest way for me to do it, and the easiest to record. With python that's not true at all. PS: I don't think I've ever seen someone use Labview to write and debug a DSP algorithm, so we've probably experienced totally different industries.
      - Archit3ch 7y ago
        In my experience, the engineers who don't specialize in programming prefer MATLAB. Programmers will be comfortable in it, but will sooner reach for python etc. Much like Excel, it's easier to get people to program if you can convince them it's not programming.
        qchris 7y ago
        I definitely agree in this about Excel (some things I've seen some 'people who don't like programming' do in Excel are positive mind-blowing), but just haven't seen that same thing in MATLAB. That could definitely be just because of a limit of my own experience, though, and your point makes a lot of sense.
joeberon 7y ago
How is this related to Flash? Mathematica is a powerful pattern based symbol manipulation language, Flash is a media creation software, which do you think reaches more end users?
- Nullabillity 7y ago
  Both are proprietary trapware.
  - joeberon 7y ago
    Mathematica is only trapware because it's so much better than anything else available
    - swiley 7y ago
      They used to say that about flash too.
      - Grue3 7y ago
        They were correct, too.
        yarrel 7y ago
        Then along came HTML 5.
    - h91wka 7y ago
      MapleSoft Maple was on par with Mathematica, when I worked with both (ca 2010). Not sure about current state of affairs. Maple's embedded programming language is also quite a bit nicer.
      - h91wka 7y ago
        P.S. I actually remembered one area where Maple is still absolutely superior, that is plotting. It doesn't require to explicitly set argument range, it tries to find features of the function and adjusts the range to include them. AFAIK, Mathematica still doesn't do this.
tiawaven 7y ago
Use sagemath (sage). Runs from the command line and is python based.

It's proprietary. Do we need another Flash?

simonh 7y ago

If you don't need it, don't use it.

jimhefferon 7y ago
Fair enough, but it is helpful for someone to bring up the point about it being closed.
praptak 7y ago
I'm just pointing out that proprietary languages tend to die outside proprietary environments.
- unlinked_dll 7y ago
  Matlab and Java seem to be doing alright
  - qchris 7y ago
    Both of them certainly have their uses, but especially for MATLAB, are they? I'm working as an engineer in academia right now, and even with all the legacy holdover of MATLAB, many people I know (including almost every undergrad project I've helped with) are either using R or Python, and I know I don't go for it unless I'm absolutely forced. And that's nothing to say for the researchers whose eyes light up upon hearing of Julia. Few of those people seem like they'll be advocates for buying expensive seat licenses if they become PIs down the line or join industry 5-10 years from now. Mathematica seems a little different because I don't believe there's currently a viable alternative, let alone a commonly used one.
    - unlinked_dll 7y ago
      I mean yea, MATLAB is indispensable for the working engineer in controls or signal processing. Python is coming in vogue because of ML applications, but it's primarily used in the wild for scripting together builds and tests, which often are used for testing data generated by MATLAB models. I've never seen a workplace use R or Julia or list them on a job posting outside data science or academia. Julia in particular is missing major components that make it useable, particularly in signal processing. MATLAB also has the advantage of being useful as a CLI calculator for linear algebra, which is how a lot of engineers use it in their day to day. The REPL's of python and Julia are far too slow for that kind of work, frankly. Especially Julia. the JIT takes forever to warm up. It really doesn't fit into my workflow at all, and I've tried to force it. Also, Simulink.
      - qchris 7y ago
        Your point about Simulink is fair--even the Octave version, Xcos, doesn't provide much of an alternative for doing good controls simulations. And while I agree that the Julia's JIT is pretty slow to come up, if I'm doing a lot of linear algebra work, I've typically just left a dedicated terminal open for it. I also haven't had much of a real speed issue with using a REPL or notebook, unless the data sets are unreasonably large. I think I disagree with your take on Python's most common uses, as well as the implication that it is just now "coming into vogue." I'm by nobody's measure a Pythonista, but my experience has been that it gets pulled in almost anywhere it can, from scripting to app development to scientific computing. I am curious about your experience with signal processing, though--how have you seen MATLAB used where Python wasn't or couldn't? I haven't done much in that area since undergrad/internships, and there I would have said that LabView was much more prevalent as a tool, or even Labwindows. At least for many of the common functions like FFT, I don't recall MATLAB being any more common than any other language for that sort of thing (although as I said, my experience there might not be representative).
        unlinked_dll 7y ago
        I meant python coming into vogue for signal processing/controls, sorry if that was unclear. And that's mostly anecdotal. There's a lot of internal tooling around MATLAB that would take a lot of work to replace with Python. Like for example, I know a company that has a verilog compiler for their matlab models. That's not going to be rewritten for python. MATLAB toolchains are also easy to maintain, since they're so damn expensive and locked down. Compared to python, which... isn't always straightforward. And like I said before, MATLAB is just a fancy and expensive calculator. It's number crunch first, script second, and language third. Julia and python have a different balance, at least to me. If I'm doing something quick and dirty, reaching for MATLAB is the absolute fastest way for me to do it, and the easiest to record. With python that's not true at all. PS: I don't think I've ever seen someone use Labview to write and debug a DSP algorithm, so we've probably experienced totally different industries.
    - Archit3ch 7y ago
      In my experience, the engineers who don't specialize in programming prefer MATLAB. Programmers will be comfortable in it, but will sooner reach for python etc. Much like Excel, it's easier to get people to program if you can convince them it's not programming.
      - qchris 7y ago
        I definitely agree in this about Excel (some things I've seen some 'people who don't like programming' do in Excel are positive mind-blowing), but just haven't seen that same thing in MATLAB. That could definitely be just because of a limit of my own experience, though, and your point makes a lot of sense.

joeberon 7y ago

How is this related to Flash? Mathematica is a powerful pattern based symbol manipulation language, Flash is a media creation software, which do you think reaches more end users?

Nullabillity 7y ago
Both are proprietary trapware.
- joeberon 7y ago
  Mathematica is only trapware because it's so much better than anything else available
  - swiley 7y ago
    They used to say that about flash too.
    - Grue3 7y ago
      They were correct, too.
      - yarrel 7y ago
        Then along came HTML 5.
  - h91wka 7y ago
    MapleSoft Maple was on par with Mathematica, when I worked with both (ca 2010). Not sure about current state of affairs. Maple's embedded programming language is also quite a bit nicer.
    - h91wka 7y ago
      P.S. I actually remembered one area where Maple is still absolutely superior, that is plotting. It doesn't require to explicitly set argument range, it tries to find features of the function and adjusts the range to include them. AFAIK, Mathematica still doesn't do this.

tiawaven 7y ago

Use sagemath (sage). Runs from the command line and is python based.