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I love Mathematica and use it nearly every day. However, I would not recommend it as general purpose language because of its proprietary nature. The $295 barr
by RaphiePS 14y ago
I love Mathematica and use it nearly every day.
However, I would not recommend it as general purpose language because of its proprietary nature.
The $295 barrier to entry is way too high. Unless there are better interpreters than Mathics (which as someone mentioned is great, but is just a subset) around, I don't see the point.
- jgamman 14y agoyou love it. you use it every day. $295 is too high?
- opminion 14y agoYou cannot share your source code in a way that those who matter to you can modify and run, without them paying the price too. Including your future self.
- RaphiePS 14y agoI'm not arguing that it's a bad language. I was happy to pay up. It perfectly suits my needs. I'm just saying that it'd be a ridiculous "general-purpose" language because anyone who wants to use it must shell out nearly a third of a grand. I think it fills a fantastic niche for math and science, where its powerful capabilities really come in handy. But general purpose scripting? Silly.
- Evbn 14y agoWhy would the price make it ridiculous to use it for more puprposes and thus amortize its cost?
- RaphiePS 14y agoAhh, I was assuming the parent to my comment was implying that people who don't already have Mathematica should check it out for general-purpose programming. If you've already bought Mathematica, great, use it for whatever you want! However, I don't think you should buy it unless you actually need its advanced features.
- mjcohen 14y agoOh, come on! Considering the approximately $2,000 price for standard commercial versions of Mathematica, MatLab, and Maple, the $295 for the home version of Mathematica is quite reasonable. If you want to freeload, get Sage (which is quite good, btw).
- troymc 14y agoWolfram now has a version of Mathematica called "Starter" which costs $995 CAD and can be used for commercial purposes (unlike the home version). The Starter version only gets upgrades for one year, but you can keep using it after one year.
- coldtea 14y ago>The $295 barrier to entry is way too high. People spend that much in dog food. This is a tool with years of work by a huge team behind it, with hard-core scientific innovations built in, and which you are supposed to use for years professionally. Imagine if dentists said: "I will use a hammer to take out your teath. I cannot justify $10,000 for this proprietary machine for company X".
- RaphiePS 14y agoSeems like everyone's misunderstanding my sentiment--now that I look back, I was pretty unclear. I'm not arguing that Mathematica is too expensive. I think it's worth the money and more for math/science/engineering work. I was glad to pay up because it fills that niche for me. My beef is with the suggestion that it should be used for general purpose work, like scripting. I believe that if people need advanced math features, Mathematica is extraordinary. But dropping $295 for a proprietary system as a replacement for Ruby or Java?