People who were at Caltech at the time have gone on record that Wolfram knew very little about compilers when he wrote Mathematica: http://groups.google.com/gr

People who were at Caltech at the time have gone on record that Wolfram knew very little about compilers when he wrote Mathematica: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/f3b93140c2f2e922 http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/f3b93140c2... which explains why the Mathematica language contains so many amateurish mistakes, like its bizarre implementation of scope and its wacky pseudo-macro system. Don't get me wrong, Mathematica is a great product, in particular the standard library is fantastic, but the language itself is a mess.