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Well, here's something that HTML5 can't do (at least easily). Dynamic @ Graphics @ Point @ ImageKeypoints @ CurrentImage[] What does this do? It takes a video

Well, here's something that HTML5 can't do (at least easily). Dynamic @ Graphics @ Point @ ImageKeypoints @ CurrentImage[] What does this do? It takes a video stream from your webcam, extracts SURF keypoints ("salient" parts of the image, like corners), and plots them live. Note that all those functions are online at reference.wolfram.com. THAT'S A CDF! You have access to some heavy duty algorithms covering a vast number of fields. In fact its kind of surprising it fits in a few hundred megs. You're essentially getting the whole of Mathematica, for free.

iandanforth 15y ago
That's cool, and compared to writing the code to do that manually, it's compact, but I'm having trouble imagining a worse syntax and naming scheme for achieving that task. Give me this: stream = OpenVideoStream(device) render1 = stream.surf() render2 = stream.sift() etc. display(outDevice, stream)
- psykotic 15y ago
  The infix @ operator is just right-associative application, so a @ b @ c is synonymous with a[b[c]]. It plays the same syntactic role as $ does in Haskell for writing pipeline-style code.
derleth 15y ago
And how many of those CDF files will still be readable in ten years?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- taliesinb 15y ago
  So Wolfram Research has been around for 25 years, which is geological time for a software company. It has a (several) niches, and its technology is so far ahead of its competitors that I think the answer to your question is: all of them.
  - derleth 15y ago
    I don't believe you. If this doesn't take off, Wolfram dumps the project, removes the software from its website and other channels, and the documents are worthless. If I invest in this, I'm betting Wolfram is going to boil the ocean or is going to be cost-insensitive regarding how much it takes to keep this available. Neither of those sound like good bets.

iandanforth 15y ago

That's cool, and compared to writing the code to do that manually, it's compact, but I'm having trouble imagining a worse syntax and naming scheme for achieving that task. Give me this: stream = OpenVideoStream(device) render1 = stream.surf() render2 = stream.sift() etc. display(outDevice, stream)

psykotic 15y ago
The infix @ operator is just right-associative application, so a @ b @ c is synonymous with a[b[c]]. It plays the same syntactic role as $ does in Haskell for writing pipeline-style code.

derleth 15y ago

And how many of those CDF files will still be readable in ten years?

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
taliesinb 15y ago
So Wolfram Research has been around for 25 years, which is geological time for a software company. It has a (several) niches, and its technology is so far ahead of its competitors that I think the answer to your question is: all of them.
- derleth 15y ago
  I don't believe you. If this doesn't take off, Wolfram dumps the project, removes the software from its website and other channels, and the documents are worthless. If I invest in this, I'm betting Wolfram is going to boil the ocean or is going to be cost-insensitive regarding how much it takes to keep this available. Neither of those sound like good bets.