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This has been a very long time in coming. Here's Wolfram in a 1993 interview: "One of the things that I consider an exciting direction is to what extent we can

This has been a very long time in coming. Here's Wolfram in a 1993 interview: "One of the things that I consider an exciting direction is to what extent we can expand the use of the language itself, independent of the application side of Mathematica. We've considered making a thing that will probably be called M, that is essentially Mathematica without the mathematics." http://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/stephen-wolfram-multiparadigm-man/ http://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/stephen-wolfram-multipar... What's funny is that it's only the "without the mathematics" part that hasn't necessarily come true, except possibly in terms of marketing. This little Raspberry Pi below my desk has a "Wolfram Language" distribution on it, which as far as I can tell is exactly the same as Mathematica.

cormullion 13y ago
You're right, I think. The language that's been at the centre of Mathematica for 25 years hasn't had a name of its own (it's just been "the language used in Mathematica"), but now it has its own name - the Wolfram Language. The Pi has an early pre-release version of version 10, whereas Mathematica is currently on version 9, and there are a number of additional features which will presumably be included in the release of Mathematica version 10. Leaving aside the re-branding issues, it makes some sense for the language to have a separate name, because Wolfram intends for it to be used in web browsers and other places where there is no surrounding development environment (the Mathematica notebook and 'front end').