3 ms·

Does anyone use this outside of college classes? It looks so great in these demos but I never hear of companies using it.

afolkest 4mo ago
Not industry, but it's pretty popular among theoretical physics researchers.
- jjtheblunt 4mo ago
  I had it in an engineering inner sanctum of Apple. had used it since it came out in 1988 on campus in Illinois, and folks in Apple definitely knew it. Not sure who all was doing what with it.
  - Grosvenor 4mo ago
    Steve Jobs and Stephen Wolfram were friends for years. Mathematica shipped preinstalled on early NeXT systems. SJ recommended some of the UI bits of the notebook. Particularly the separators between cells.
    - raegis 4mo ago
      I used Mathematica on a NeXT computer back in 1991. It was a beautiful machine to work on. I did a student project where I simulated the flow of the boundary of a plane region over time (like how the shape of a drop of oil in water changes over time) and it was very, very easy to write in Mathematica with cool graphics.
    - Grosvenor 4mo ago
      How could I forget this! He also recommended the name. Wolfram had come up with some normal techie names "computron", "math-o-matic" or whatever. SJ said No those suck, use something simple like Mathematica.
    - jjtheblunt 4mo ago
      (Theo Gray is in there too; he built the notebook interface, was introduced by SJ to show it at some event. Theo's parents were math profs in Urbana and I studied under his dad one summer, house-sat, and I too had NeXTstep access and Mathematica since it was ubiquitous there)
- markgall 4mo ago
  Still nowadays? My impression is that in (pure) math it's lost most of its market share in the last few years. But maybe that's only in my circles.
  - ahnick 4mo ago
    what do you or others use instead?
    - markgall 4mo ago
      Probably the most general-purpose one is SageMath, which is open-source and basically Python with a ton of sophisticated math stuff built into it. Everything I used to do in Mathematica I now do in sage, and I don't think I'm the only one. Probably field-dependent though. Of course there is a whole constellation of more specialized things in certain fields, that has come a long way in the last 15 years. So people needing things like that no longer kludge things together in Mathematica.
      - bloaf 4mo ago
        Does SageMath use Sympy, or is there some other integrator built in? Last I heard Sympy was one of the worst performers, even among other open source CASs. https://www.12000.org/my_notes/CAS_integration_tests/reports/summer_2024/indexchapter1.htm#x2-10001 https://www.12000.org/my_notes/CAS_integration_tests/reports...
        pmarin 4mo ago
        It used Maxima many years ago.
    - zozbot234 4mo ago
      Maple would be the main proprietary alternative but yes, there's also SageMath.
mackeye 4mo ago
it has the nicest calculator syntax (imho) among the tools i've tried (python/julia/array langs/matlab/etc...) with extensive docs for each function and a nice notebook interface, but i've never written a program in it that was longer than one expression.
Postosuchus 4mo ago
It used to be pretty popular for mathematical modeling in quantitative finance.
- david_rugaex 4mo ago
  I work in quantitative finance. I do the vast vast majority of my algebra and stochastic calculus in Mathematica, and lots of ad hoc data visualization.
alok-g 4mo ago
I have used at work a lot for some projects (device physics modeling stuff)

afolkest 4mo ago

Not industry, but it's pretty popular among theoretical physics researchers.

jjtheblunt 4mo ago
I had it in an engineering inner sanctum of Apple. had used it since it came out in 1988 on campus in Illinois, and folks in Apple definitely knew it. Not sure who all was doing what with it.
- Grosvenor 4mo ago
  Steve Jobs and Stephen Wolfram were friends for years. Mathematica shipped preinstalled on early NeXT systems. SJ recommended some of the UI bits of the notebook. Particularly the separators between cells.
  - raegis 4mo ago
    I used Mathematica on a NeXT computer back in 1991. It was a beautiful machine to work on. I did a student project where I simulated the flow of the boundary of a plane region over time (like how the shape of a drop of oil in water changes over time) and it was very, very easy to write in Mathematica with cool graphics.
  - Grosvenor 4mo ago
    How could I forget this! He also recommended the name. Wolfram had come up with some normal techie names "computron", "math-o-matic" or whatever. SJ said No those suck, use something simple like Mathematica.
  - jjtheblunt 4mo ago
    (Theo Gray is in there too; he built the notebook interface, was introduced by SJ to show it at some event. Theo's parents were math profs in Urbana and I studied under his dad one summer, house-sat, and I too had NeXTstep access and Mathematica since it was ubiquitous there)
markgall 4mo ago
Still nowadays? My impression is that in (pure) math it's lost most of its market share in the last few years. But maybe that's only in my circles.
- ahnick 4mo ago
  what do you or others use instead?
  - markgall 4mo ago
    Probably the most general-purpose one is SageMath, which is open-source and basically Python with a ton of sophisticated math stuff built into it. Everything I used to do in Mathematica I now do in sage, and I don't think I'm the only one. Probably field-dependent though. Of course there is a whole constellation of more specialized things in certain fields, that has come a long way in the last 15 years. So people needing things like that no longer kludge things together in Mathematica.
    - bloaf 4mo ago
      Does SageMath use Sympy, or is there some other integrator built in? Last I heard Sympy was one of the worst performers, even among other open source CASs. https://www.12000.org/my_notes/CAS_integration_tests/reports/summer_2024/indexchapter1.htm#x2-10001 https://www.12000.org/my_notes/CAS_integration_tests/reports...
      - pmarin 4mo ago
        It used Maxima many years ago.
  - zozbot234 4mo ago
    Maple would be the main proprietary alternative but yes, there's also SageMath.

mackeye 4mo ago

it has the nicest calculator syntax (imho) among the tools i've tried (python/julia/array langs/matlab/etc...) with extensive docs for each function and a nice notebook interface, but i've never written a program in it that was longer than one expression.

Postosuchus 4mo ago

It used to be pretty popular for mathematical modeling in quantitative finance.

david_rugaex 4mo ago
I work in quantitative finance. I do the vast vast majority of my algebra and stochastic calculus in Mathematica, and lots of ad hoc data visualization.

alok-g 4mo ago

I have used at work a lot for some projects (device physics modeling stuff)