4 ms·

> As an expensive proprietary software however It's $195/year for a personal license. And only $75/year for students. Their licensing model is pretty broad.

by themafia 11mo ago

zorked 11mo ago
It still creates a class of haves and have-nots which prevents forming a community. Plus you buy a version of it, and then someone else is on another version, and you don't have the same features, and the tiny community is fragmented.
bborud 11mo ago
Well, that doesn't sound too bad. But this is a high enough barrier for Mathematica to not see wide spread use. I don't remember what the pricing has been throughout the years. But I do remember that for some of the time I couldn't really afford Mathematica. And the license I wanted was also a bit too expensive to justify for a piece of software that only I would be using within an organization. Because it is also about enough other people around you not being able to justify the expense. And about companies not wanting to pay a lot of money for licenses so they can lock their computations into an ecosystem that is very small. Mathematica is, in the computing world, pretty irrelevant. And I'm being generous when I say "pretty": I have never encountered it in any job or even in academia. People know of it. They just don't use it for work. It would have been nice if the language and the runtime had been open source. But Wolfram didn't want to go in that direction. That's a perfectly fine choice to make. But it does mean that as a language, Mathematica will never be important. Nor will knowing how to program in it be a marketable skill. (To Stephen Wolfram it really doesn't matter. He obviously makes a good living. I'm not sure I'd bother with the noise and stress coming from open sourcing something)
- aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
  > And I'm being generous when I say "pretty": I have never encountered it in any job or even in academia. People know of it. They just don't use it for work. To my knowledge, at least in academia, Wolfram (Mathematica) seems to be used quite a bit by physicists. Also in some areas of mathematics it is used (but many mathematicians seems to prefer Maple). Concerning mathematical research, I want to mention that by now also some open-source (and often more specialized) CASs seem to have become more widespread, such as SageMath, SymPy, Macaulay2, GP/PARI or GAP.
  - jjgreen 11mo ago
    In Maple sin(x) is "sin(x)", in Mathematica it's "Sin[x]", ewww
    - aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
      In my opinion, Wolfram/Mathematica is more consistent internally, while Maple is more consistent with the usual mathematical notation.
      - DonHopkins 11mo ago
        > while Maple is more consistent with the usual mathematical notation I can't tell if you're saying that as if it's a good thing, or a bad thing.
        aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
        It's not about good nor bad, but about the different trade-offs that these two CASs made. What is more important for you is something that you can only answer for yourself.
    - pmkary 11mo ago
      I actually loved this idea so much that every language I make, I try to do the same. The point of it is that typing ( requires shift, while [ does not. And you have no idea when you have tunnel syndrome, how much it hurts each time you write a (. While it’s ugly, the hand thanks you for it.
      - SSLy 11mo ago
        > The point of it is that typing ( requires shift, while [ does not. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/xkeyboard-config/-/blob/8aa73d2c9a5a7391538c932e265f89c416b53138/rules/base.extras.xml#L1925 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/xkeyboard-co... Now, I really could've used something like this on macOS… Karabiner to the rescue https://genesy.github.io/karabiner-complex-rules-generator/#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 https://genesy.github.io/karabiner-complex-rules-generator/#...
- andrewaylett 11mo ago
  I definitely get the impression that Wolfram builds his tools primarily for himself, and is happy to let other people play with them because that way he gets money to pay for them.
  - pmkary 11mo ago
    That is not the impression, that is exactly why, And actually that is their strength. Back in the days the whole Apple was there to make software for Jobs and look how awesome that turned out. Wolfram is trying to complete tue work of Leibniz and create a universal calculus. A unifying language for symbolic computation, which is amazing.
jwrallie 11mo ago
I’d like to use it sporadically, but they charge a lot for people in academia, and for my use case it’s simply not worth it. I’m using xcas now, it’s working pretty well for my humble needs.
jazzyjackson 11mo ago
It's also free on raspberry pi
dataflow 11mo ago
While I'm not sure the particular price point is the biggest problem here, the student license pricing doesn't feel seem that great either. The language is hard enough to learn, and most students won't have time to figure out if they want to buy it with a 15-day trial. They'd probably need half a semester at the very least, unless it's a required part of the curriculum. In the rare case where a student is already familiar enough to know they want it, then four years of $75/year is $300... at that point they may as well just pay $390 for a perpetual personal license, so they can at least keep opening their files in the future. That said, the parent was talking about it being expensive for use in industry. Personal and student licenses aren't relevant there.
the__alchemist 11mo ago
Ok fuck it. Bought the year!
analog31 11mo ago
My thought is that licenses were similarly cheap for historical programming tools like Turbo Pascal and Visual Basic. My dad got me Turbo Pascal for my birthday, for $39, after reading about it in the Wall Street Journal. But it seems like the proprietary languages have all withered, regardless of price. Even $195 for Mathematica is an obvious concession to this trend. I don't ever remember it being that cheap. I could write an essay on the benefits of free tooling, but enough has already been written. I'll spare you the slop. ;-)
wrxd 11mo ago
Didn’t they also bundle something for free with Raspberry Pi OS?

> As an expensive proprietary software however It's $195/year for a personal license. And only $75/year for students. Their licensing model is pretty broad.

zorked 11mo ago

It still creates a class of haves and have-nots which prevents forming a community. Plus you buy a version of it, and then someone else is on another version, and you don't have the same features, and the tiny community is fragmented.

bborud 11mo ago

Well, that doesn't sound too bad. But this is a high enough barrier for Mathematica to not see wide spread use. I don't remember what the pricing has been throughout the years. But I do remember that for some of the time I couldn't really afford Mathematica. And the license I wanted was also a bit too expensive to justify for a piece of software that only I would be using within an organization. Because it is also about enough other people around you not being able to justify the expense. And about companies not wanting to pay a lot of money for licenses so they can lock their computations into an ecosystem that is very small. Mathematica is, in the computing world, pretty irrelevant. And I'm being generous when I say "pretty": I have never encountered it in any job or even in academia. People know of it. They just don't use it for work. It would have been nice if the language and the runtime had been open source. But Wolfram didn't want to go in that direction. That's a perfectly fine choice to make. But it does mean that as a language, Mathematica will never be important. Nor will knowing how to program in it be a marketable skill. (To Stephen Wolfram it really doesn't matter. He obviously makes a good living. I'm not sure I'd bother with the noise and stress coming from open sourcing something)

aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
> And I'm being generous when I say "pretty": I have never encountered it in any job or even in academia. People know of it. They just don't use it for work. To my knowledge, at least in academia, Wolfram (Mathematica) seems to be used quite a bit by physicists. Also in some areas of mathematics it is used (but many mathematicians seems to prefer Maple). Concerning mathematical research, I want to mention that by now also some open-source (and often more specialized) CASs seem to have become more widespread, such as SageMath, SymPy, Macaulay2, GP/PARI or GAP.
- jjgreen 11mo ago
  In Maple sin(x) is "sin(x)", in Mathematica it's "Sin[x]", ewww
  - aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
    In my opinion, Wolfram/Mathematica is more consistent internally, while Maple is more consistent with the usual mathematical notation.
    - DonHopkins 11mo ago
      > while Maple is more consistent with the usual mathematical notation I can't tell if you're saying that as if it's a good thing, or a bad thing.
      - aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
        It's not about good nor bad, but about the different trade-offs that these two CASs made. What is more important for you is something that you can only answer for yourself.
  - pmkary 11mo ago
    I actually loved this idea so much that every language I make, I try to do the same. The point of it is that typing ( requires shift, while [ does not. And you have no idea when you have tunnel syndrome, how much it hurts each time you write a (. While it’s ugly, the hand thanks you for it.
    - SSLy 11mo ago
      > The point of it is that typing ( requires shift, while [ does not. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/xkeyboard-config/-/blob/8aa73d2c9a5a7391538c932e265f89c416b53138/rules/base.extras.xml#L1925 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/xkeyboard-co... Now, I really could've used something like this on macOS… Karabiner to the rescue https://genesy.github.io/karabiner-complex-rules-generator/#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 https://genesy.github.io/karabiner-complex-rules-generator/#...
andrewaylett 11mo ago
I definitely get the impression that Wolfram builds his tools primarily for himself, and is happy to let other people play with them because that way he gets money to pay for them.
- pmkary 11mo ago
  That is not the impression, that is exactly why, And actually that is their strength. Back in the days the whole Apple was there to make software for Jobs and look how awesome that turned out. Wolfram is trying to complete tue work of Leibniz and create a universal calculus. A unifying language for symbolic computation, which is amazing.

jwrallie 11mo ago

I’d like to use it sporadically, but they charge a lot for people in academia, and for my use case it’s simply not worth it. I’m using xcas now, it’s working pretty well for my humble needs.

jazzyjackson 11mo ago

It's also free on raspberry pi

dataflow 11mo ago

While I'm not sure the particular price point is the biggest problem here, the student license pricing doesn't feel seem that great either. The language is hard enough to learn, and most students won't have time to figure out if they want to buy it with a 15-day trial. They'd probably need half a semester at the very least, unless it's a required part of the curriculum. In the rare case where a student is already familiar enough to know they want it, then four years of $75/year is $300... at that point they may as well just pay $390 for a perpetual personal license, so they can at least keep opening their files in the future. That said, the parent was talking about it being expensive for use in industry. Personal and student licenses aren't relevant there.

the__alchemist 11mo ago

Ok fuck it. Bought the year!

analog31 11mo ago

My thought is that licenses were similarly cheap for historical programming tools like Turbo Pascal and Visual Basic. My dad got me Turbo Pascal for my birthday, for $39, after reading about it in the Wall Street Journal. But it seems like the proprietary languages have all withered, regardless of price. Even $195 for Mathematica is an obvious concession to this trend. I don't ever remember it being that cheap. I could write an essay on the benefits of free tooling, but enough has already been written. I'll spare you the slop. ;-)

wrxd 11mo ago

Didn’t they also bundle something for free with Raspberry Pi OS?