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While I think his notebooks and features look pretty useful, he frames the article around having invented "notebooks" 36 years ago before anyone else, and talks

While I think his notebooks and features look pretty useful, he frames the article around having invented "notebooks" 36 years ago before anyone else, and talks about other notebooks not having features that they've had since 1987. This is a pretty odd context to basically describe a new chat feature. Is this a record that should be set straight? I've used Jupyter since it was IPython notebook, but I don't think that community claims to be the first coming of notebooks. The accessibility of python along with the breadth and depth of the scipy community makes it a quite a tour de force. So perhaps these articles are aimed at people who only use open source tools.

akiselev 3y ago
> Is this a record that should be set straight? It's Wolfram. If they didn't claim to invent something fundamental in the first paragraph, I'd immediately assume the site was hacked or it's a poorly timed April fools joke written by an intern.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- cshimmin 3y ago
  Yes, he is a narcissist. Smart guy, cool products, but it's just like how Trump cannot talk about anything without shoehorning in a statement like "I got more votes than any sitting president ever" when being asked about something completely unrelated. My favorite example is when Caltech put out a press release about a young woman got her PhD and nearly beat Wolfram's record for youngest PhD from Caltech. He felt immediately compelled to write a long winded several-thousand word essay about how glad he is to still have the record for being the youngest PhD, by a full two weeks! And also, he wanted to remind everyone that he knew Richard Feynman. Cringe...
  - ElFitz 3y ago
    That sounds quite sad. Just like bragging about high-school. At 36.
- canadianfella 3y ago
  [dead]
burkaman 3y ago
Seems like it's debatable depending on your definition of "notebook": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notebook_interface#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notebook_interface#History But also, even if it's true, it's kind of an offputting way to start the article. I know that's his thing and I know it's discussed every time one of these is posted here so apologies for the repetitive observation.
- relaytheurgency 3y ago
  Very off putting. I hate to admit that I stopped reading afterward. I don't like to be that way, but there's a lot to read out here.
  - rvcdbn 3y ago
    If it makes you feel any better, same.
- abecedarius 3y ago
  That wiki page says > According to Stephen Wolfram: "The idea of a notebook is to have an interactive document that freely mixes code, results, graphics, text and everything else. By that description Smalltalk with its workspace goes back to the 70s. (I don't know if there's anything closer to the Mathematica notebooks from that era.)
donpark 3y ago
Having been there when it was first announced, I think his "claim" has substance. Mathematica clearly defined the "notebooks" UI as it is known today.
- simsla 3y ago
  It's not about him being right or not, but about it being irrelevant.
  - pedrosorio 3y ago
    In a blog post about integrating LLMs into the notebook paradigm, going back to the invention of notebooks by the same company is irrelevant?
electroly 3y ago
What's the predecessor with a notebook interface from before 1987? I'm not aware of one. Wolfram loves to claim he invented stuff but this one might actually be true. The Wikipedia article suggests a contemporary in 1987 (MathCAD) but I'm not seeing a Mathematica/Jupyter-style notebook interface before that year. That would seem to have been the year of the notebook interface, and Mathematica 1.0 did come out that year with one. As far as Wolfram claims go, this one doesn't seem too offensive.
- stabbles 3y ago
  Even if true it's unnecessary. I just can't read anything written by Wolfram without rolling my eyes
  - Frost1x 3y ago
    Of course it's unnecessary, but I suspect there's at least some substance to this claim. If it were anyone else, a harmless plug like this would be accepted by most, might even be an interesting nugget a reader would appreciate. The issue is the style of claim (being the originator) is dropped far more than it should be. I'm personally a fan of many ideas Wolfram pushes, just not a fan of the style they're pushed. I'd say I'm not in the minority, to the point it's a tired cliche.
  - nmstoker 3y ago
    Likewise. Especially when it's liberally sprinkled with his catch phrase: "A new kind of..." It's unfortunate as clearly he has a huge amount to contribute. Maybe with an LLM someone can build a de-Stepheniser that takes in his pompous, smug text and outputs something more mellow and reasonable whilst keeping all the facts, which is what we are there for after all.
    - zaps 3y ago
      A new kind of new kind
      - 3y ago
paulgb 3y ago
> I've used Jupyter since it was IPython notebook, but I don't think that community claims to be the first coming of notebooks. My recollection (which could be wrong, it's been a while) is that SageMath’s notebook preceeded iPython notebooks. IIRC iPython started as a CLI repl, which may have come before the notebook. (Mathematica came before all of them, and likely inspired SageMath’s interface)
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Speaking of which, has anyone made an open source pretty printed input interface for sage or do I have to keep flogging my old Mathematica 7 license for a few more years?
- williamstein 3y ago
  Tom Boothby, Alex Clemesha and I wrote the first web based notebook interface in 2006, which was indeed the Sage Notebook. It was very painful at the time - jquery wasn’t even a thing yet! It was inspired by Mathematica notebooks, mainly because Alex was a heavy Mathematica user when he was a physics undergrad at UCSD. Similarly, Fernando Perez’s Ipython CLI was also inspired by Mathematica notebooks. I personally didn’t use Mathematica notebooks a lot, and was even more inspired by various clever Emacs modes and also Mathcad, and by the first version of Google docs. In any case, we were all inspired by Mathematica notebooks!
fnoof 3y ago
Theodore Gray, cofounder of wolfram research, was responsible for notebooks I believe. > I wrote the Notebook user interface for Mathematica and led the user interface group for over 20 years. https://home.theodoregray.com/ https://home.theodoregray.com/
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  Wrote or thought of the concept are not the same.
  - theodoregray 3y ago
    See my long comment on another comment in this thread. I both thought of some of the key ideas, and implemented them.
taeric 3y ago
Community may not claim to be the first with notebooks; but they certainly seem to think they have something nobody else has with it. Per their website, "The Jupyter Notebook is the original web application for creating and sharing computational documents. It offers a simple, streamlined, document-centric experience." Which, I suppose I can cede that they are among the first "web applications" that do this. But I have a hard time really getting behind a ton of the discussion on it. Even talking about the "breadth and depth" of part of the python community is to ignore how much had been done for years in the mathematica community.
- williamstein 3y ago
  They do say what you quote with those words, but I think their intention is just trying to clarify the difference between Jupyter classic and JupyterLab. The Sage notebook predates the Jupyter project by at least five years, but was visually and functionally very similar.
  - taeric 3y ago
    To be fair, I'm not so worried on this. Even if Jupyter was what introduced some (many?) folks to notebooks, that is fine. I was soured as early advocates were pitching it as way more impressive than it is. With some being proud of themselves for realizing you can put a "pip install" at the top of the notebook, thinking that somehow made it repeatable. I recall senior engineers wanting notebooks to have prod access so that you could deploy from a notebook. And thinking they were making a good practice statement. Ugh.
b215826 3y ago
Notebooks are just glorified REPLs, and they've been around since the early days of Lisp.
- lmeyerov 3y ago
  Winner!
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  Every time I see "Notebooks" I think of Literate Programming, shrug, and bump the "Learn Org Mode tangling" priority up a notch.
bachmeier 3y ago
This doesn't crack my list of the top 1000 programming debates, but it's not controversial to say that given that literate programming, the Smalltalk IDE, and the REPL were all around before Mathematica notebooks, they didn't bring any new ideas to the world. It may still have been an innovation to create a remix of ideas borrowed from others.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
esjeon 3y ago
The notebook interface of Mathematica is simply unique. It is based on a Lisp-like language (Wolfram language), and fully exploits everything that Lisp can offer (and Lisp can get weird infinitely). It provides an unmatched level of freedom and versatility to the end-user. Wolfram is clearly the first one who built a end-user interface this much powerful, and nothing literally comes close, even Jupyter. So, yeah, seeing that Jupyter is being used more broadly than Mathematica, Wolfram should feel uncomfortable. (Also note that Jupyter is officially inspired by Mathematica.)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

akiselev 3y ago

> Is this a record that should be set straight? It's Wolfram. If they didn't claim to invent something fundamental in the first paragraph, I'd immediately assume the site was hacked or it's a poorly timed April fools joke written by an intern.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cshimmin 3y ago
Yes, he is a narcissist. Smart guy, cool products, but it's just like how Trump cannot talk about anything without shoehorning in a statement like "I got more votes than any sitting president ever" when being asked about something completely unrelated. My favorite example is when Caltech put out a press release about a young woman got her PhD and nearly beat Wolfram's record for youngest PhD from Caltech. He felt immediately compelled to write a long winded several-thousand word essay about how glad he is to still have the record for being the youngest PhD, by a full two weeks! And also, he wanted to remind everyone that he knew Richard Feynman. Cringe...
- ElFitz 3y ago
  That sounds quite sad. Just like bragging about high-school. At 36.
canadianfella 3y ago
[dead]

burkaman 3y ago

Seems like it's debatable depending on your definition of "notebook": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notebook_interface#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notebook_interface#History But also, even if it's true, it's kind of an offputting way to start the article. I know that's his thing and I know it's discussed every time one of these is posted here so apologies for the repetitive observation.

relaytheurgency 3y ago
Very off putting. I hate to admit that I stopped reading afterward. I don't like to be that way, but there's a lot to read out here.
- rvcdbn 3y ago
  If it makes you feel any better, same.
abecedarius 3y ago
That wiki page says > According to Stephen Wolfram: "The idea of a notebook is to have an interactive document that freely mixes code, results, graphics, text and everything else. By that description Smalltalk with its workspace goes back to the 70s. (I don't know if there's anything closer to the Mathematica notebooks from that era.)

donpark 3y ago

Having been there when it was first announced, I think his "claim" has substance. Mathematica clearly defined the "notebooks" UI as it is known today.

simsla 3y ago
It's not about him being right or not, but about it being irrelevant.
- pedrosorio 3y ago
  In a blog post about integrating LLMs into the notebook paradigm, going back to the invention of notebooks by the same company is irrelevant?

electroly 3y ago

What's the predecessor with a notebook interface from before 1987? I'm not aware of one. Wolfram loves to claim he invented stuff but this one might actually be true. The Wikipedia article suggests a contemporary in 1987 (MathCAD) but I'm not seeing a Mathematica/Jupyter-style notebook interface before that year. That would seem to have been the year of the notebook interface, and Mathematica 1.0 did come out that year with one. As far as Wolfram claims go, this one doesn't seem too offensive.

stabbles 3y ago
Even if true it's unnecessary. I just can't read anything written by Wolfram without rolling my eyes
- Frost1x 3y ago
  Of course it's unnecessary, but I suspect there's at least some substance to this claim. If it were anyone else, a harmless plug like this would be accepted by most, might even be an interesting nugget a reader would appreciate. The issue is the style of claim (being the originator) is dropped far more than it should be. I'm personally a fan of many ideas Wolfram pushes, just not a fan of the style they're pushed. I'd say I'm not in the minority, to the point it's a tired cliche.
- nmstoker 3y ago
  Likewise. Especially when it's liberally sprinkled with his catch phrase: "A new kind of..." It's unfortunate as clearly he has a huge amount to contribute. Maybe with an LLM someone can build a de-Stepheniser that takes in his pompous, smug text and outputs something more mellow and reasonable whilst keeping all the facts, which is what we are there for after all.
  - zaps 3y ago
    A new kind of new kind
    - 3y ago

paulgb 3y ago

> I've used Jupyter since it was IPython notebook, but I don't think that community claims to be the first coming of notebooks. My recollection (which could be wrong, it's been a while) is that SageMath’s notebook preceeded iPython notebooks. IIRC iPython started as a CLI repl, which may have come before the notebook. (Mathematica came before all of them, and likely inspired SageMath’s interface)

jjoonathan 3y ago
Speaking of which, has anyone made an open source pretty printed input interface for sage or do I have to keep flogging my old Mathematica 7 license for a few more years?
williamstein 3y ago
Tom Boothby, Alex Clemesha and I wrote the first web based notebook interface in 2006, which was indeed the Sage Notebook. It was very painful at the time - jquery wasn’t even a thing yet! It was inspired by Mathematica notebooks, mainly because Alex was a heavy Mathematica user when he was a physics undergrad at UCSD. Similarly, Fernando Perez’s Ipython CLI was also inspired by Mathematica notebooks. I personally didn’t use Mathematica notebooks a lot, and was even more inspired by various clever Emacs modes and also Mathcad, and by the first version of Google docs. In any case, we were all inspired by Mathematica notebooks!

fnoof 3y ago

Theodore Gray, cofounder of wolfram research, was responsible for notebooks I believe. > I wrote the Notebook user interface for Mathematica and led the user interface group for over 20 years. https://home.theodoregray.com/ https://home.theodoregray.com/

anonzzzies 3y ago
Wrote or thought of the concept are not the same.
- theodoregray 3y ago
  See my long comment on another comment in this thread. I both thought of some of the key ideas, and implemented them.

taeric 3y ago

Community may not claim to be the first with notebooks; but they certainly seem to think they have something nobody else has with it. Per their website, "The Jupyter Notebook is the original web application for creating and sharing computational documents. It offers a simple, streamlined, document-centric experience." Which, I suppose I can cede that they are among the first "web applications" that do this. But I have a hard time really getting behind a ton of the discussion on it. Even talking about the "breadth and depth" of part of the python community is to ignore how much had been done for years in the mathematica community.

williamstein 3y ago
They do say what you quote with those words, but I think their intention is just trying to clarify the difference between Jupyter classic and JupyterLab. The Sage notebook predates the Jupyter project by at least five years, but was visually and functionally very similar.
- taeric 3y ago
  To be fair, I'm not so worried on this. Even if Jupyter was what introduced some (many?) folks to notebooks, that is fine. I was soured as early advocates were pitching it as way more impressive than it is. With some being proud of themselves for realizing you can put a "pip install" at the top of the notebook, thinking that somehow made it repeatable. I recall senior engineers wanting notebooks to have prod access so that you could deploy from a notebook. And thinking they were making a good practice statement. Ugh.

b215826 3y ago

Notebooks are just glorified REPLs, and they've been around since the early days of Lisp.

lmeyerov 3y ago
Winner!
slowmovintarget 3y ago
Every time I see "Notebooks" I think of Literate Programming, shrug, and bump the "Learn Org Mode tangling" priority up a notch.

bachmeier 3y ago

This doesn't crack my list of the top 1000 programming debates, but it's not controversial to say that given that literate programming, the Smalltalk IDE, and the REPL were all around before Mathematica notebooks, they didn't bring any new ideas to the world. It may still have been an innovation to create a remix of ideas borrowed from others.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

esjeon 3y ago

The notebook interface of Mathematica is simply unique. It is based on a Lisp-like language (Wolfram language), and fully exploits everything that Lisp can offer (and Lisp can get weird infinitely). It provides an unmatched level of freedom and versatility to the end-user. Wolfram is clearly the first one who built a end-user interface this much powerful, and nothing literally comes close, even Jupyter. So, yeah, seeing that Jupyter is being used more broadly than Mathematica, Wolfram should feel uncomfortable. (Also note that Jupyter is officially inspired by Mathematica.)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]