7 ms·

Interesting how 'meh' the comments are. I thought that building live APIs on the web looked pretty amazing.

by bprater 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- taliesinb 12y ago
  You use that quote misleadingly. Stephen (not Steven) wrote: "My goal with the Wolfram Language in general—and Wolfram Programming Cloud in particular—is to redefine the process of programming" That's a goal, not a claim about the product. And one that many people in the industry share, and routinely espouse.
  - comex 12y ago
    I think that's a very generous interpretation - assuming that you mean the goal is long-term, else it basically is a claim anyway. Elsewhere he talks about "building up technology stack that is needed" in two previous products, which is now "in definitive form" - suggesting that the "goal" is in terms of a succession of products of which this is (close to) the pinnacle, rather than a long-term goal for the current product. He also outright states that this language is [now] "a new type of programming language" which "makes feasible for the first time all sorts of programming that were basically absurd to consider before" (emphasis mine), which is along the same lines as "redefining programming". As a Wolfram Research employee I suppose you are in a privileged position regarding what Wolfram meant, but that's what I'm reading from what he said. Oh, and I'm not outright stating the language does not redefine the process of programming - depending on your definition of "redefine", and whether the language lives up to the hype (I have barely tried Mathematica and certainly it looks very powerful in some areas). Nor is wanting to do so unique to Wolfram - things like Bret Victor's "The Future of Programming" attempt to take up the same kind of mantle. I am merely criticizing the idea that Wolfram didn't say it does.
  - gone35 12y ago
    It's not misleading at all --hinging on a literal reading of that quote is just disingenuous. For the record, further down that blog post[1], Wolfram writes (emphasis added): "So what does it all mean? I think it's pretty important, because it really changes the whole process --and economics-- of programming. I've even seen it quite dramatically within our own company. As the Wolfram Language and the Wolfram Programming Cloud have been coming together, there've been more and more places where we've been able to use them internally. And each time, it's been amazing to see programming tasks that used to take weeks or months suddenly get done in days or less." How is that not a very concrete claim about the product? [1] http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2014/06/23/wolfram-programming-cloud-is-live/ http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2014/06/23/wolfram-programming-...
    - taliesinb 12y ago
      Those are concrete claims (wrong or right), but they are made after Wolfram has shown why he thinks they are so, not at the beginning of the post like the now-deleted parent quoted.
      - gone35 12y ago
        Oh ok I see your point now. I stand corrected.
soup10 12y ago
The blog post was a lot of 'this is amazing and will change everything'(which wolfram thinks about everything he does, lol) without a convincing demonstration as to why. To me it sounds like they added more features to the Mathematica language. Which while potentially cool, it isn't likely to become a mainstream development language anytime soon. Seems most useful for quick data visualizations.
59nadir 12y ago
The thing is that it's impossible to read an interview, article or anything by Wolfram and not be washed over with hyperbolic statements about what his products mean and do. Last time I saw The Wolfram Language, for example, on HN it was full of statements like how there finally was a language that made functional programming possible, etc., and when you look at the feature set there's absolutely nothing new that makes any kind of difference. While this platform certainly seems interesting and it actually does seem to do something new, listening to Stephen Wolfram talk about how great his stuff is has gotten tiresome in general.
- arkj 12y ago
  I think one should judge the quality of the product not the author and his ego. But I agree, sometimes it can be tough. :)
- mathattack 12y ago
  It's a shame because he really is THAT smart. It's almost like the hype deters from the message.
  - jordigh 12y ago
    Really? You read A New Kind of Science and were awestruck by his genius? I've read parts of it a few times, and it just reads like a summary of other people's work[1], but if you don't read the appendices, it seems like that all of that other work was also Wolfram's. He's got a nasty habit of saying stuff like "cellullar automata theory teaches..." instead of saying "Marvin Minsky showed that...", as if the theory existed in a vacuum, independently of those who developed it. Wolfram is well-known for claiming other people's work for himself and suing anyone who claims otherwise. That's how he acquired Mathematica, but trying to find the origins of that story is difficult, because he succeeded in suing everyone into silence. [1] Plus a lot of "look at the beautiful pictures... LOOK AT THEM!" He's got a weird sense of mathematical rigour, something akin to believing that whatever the computer computes is right. Probably part of his idea of why it's ok to hide mathematics behind NDAs.
    - 12y ago
mcdonji 12y ago
I thought so too but when I actually tried using "the language" it was more like using an application (excel?). For example there are no sockets. You can't create a hello world protocol. I was disappointed.
Tarang 12y ago
I think its because Stephen Wolfram built it. If anyone else did it it would be super awesome. While I don't share the hate I see this every time with anything 'Wolfram' on HN.

Interesting how 'meh' the comments are. I thought that building live APIs on the web looked pretty amazing.

by bprater 12y ago

Interesting how 'meh' the comments are. I thought that building live APIs on the web looked pretty amazing.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

taliesinb 12y ago
You use that quote misleadingly. Stephen (not Steven) wrote: "My goal with the Wolfram Language in general—and Wolfram Programming Cloud in particular—is to redefine the process of programming" That's a goal, not a claim about the product. And one that many people in the industry share, and routinely espouse.
- comex 12y ago
  I think that's a very generous interpretation - assuming that you mean the goal is long-term, else it basically is a claim anyway. Elsewhere he talks about "building up technology stack that is needed" in two previous products, which is now "in definitive form" - suggesting that the "goal" is in terms of a succession of products of which this is (close to) the pinnacle, rather than a long-term goal for the current product. He also outright states that this language is [now] "a new type of programming language" which "makes feasible for the first time all sorts of programming that were basically absurd to consider before" (emphasis mine), which is along the same lines as "redefining programming". As a Wolfram Research employee I suppose you are in a privileged position regarding what Wolfram meant, but that's what I'm reading from what he said. Oh, and I'm not outright stating the language does not redefine the process of programming - depending on your definition of "redefine", and whether the language lives up to the hype (I have barely tried Mathematica and certainly it looks very powerful in some areas). Nor is wanting to do so unique to Wolfram - things like Bret Victor's "The Future of Programming" attempt to take up the same kind of mantle. I am merely criticizing the idea that Wolfram didn't say it does.
- gone35 12y ago
  It's not misleading at all --hinging on a literal reading of that quote is just disingenuous. For the record, further down that blog post[1], Wolfram writes (emphasis added): "So what does it all mean? I think it's pretty important, because it really changes the whole process --and economics-- of programming. I've even seen it quite dramatically within our own company. As the Wolfram Language and the Wolfram Programming Cloud have been coming together, there've been more and more places where we've been able to use them internally. And each time, it's been amazing to see programming tasks that used to take weeks or months suddenly get done in days or less." How is that not a very concrete claim about the product? [1] http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2014/06/23/wolfram-programming-cloud-is-live/ http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2014/06/23/wolfram-programming-...
  - taliesinb 12y ago
    Those are concrete claims (wrong or right), but they are made after Wolfram has shown why he thinks they are so, not at the beginning of the post like the now-deleted parent quoted.
    - gone35 12y ago
      Oh ok I see your point now. I stand corrected.

soup10 12y ago

The blog post was a lot of 'this is amazing and will change everything'(which wolfram thinks about everything he does, lol) without a convincing demonstration as to why. To me it sounds like they added more features to the Mathematica language. Which while potentially cool, it isn't likely to become a mainstream development language anytime soon. Seems most useful for quick data visualizations.

59nadir 12y ago

The thing is that it's impossible to read an interview, article or anything by Wolfram and not be washed over with hyperbolic statements about what his products mean and do. Last time I saw The Wolfram Language, for example, on HN it was full of statements like how there finally was a language that made functional programming possible, etc., and when you look at the feature set there's absolutely nothing new that makes any kind of difference. While this platform certainly seems interesting and it actually does seem to do something new, listening to Stephen Wolfram talk about how great his stuff is has gotten tiresome in general.

arkj 12y ago
I think one should judge the quality of the product not the author and his ego. But I agree, sometimes it can be tough. :)
mathattack 12y ago
It's a shame because he really is THAT smart. It's almost like the hype deters from the message.
- jordigh 12y ago
  Really? You read A New Kind of Science and were awestruck by his genius? I've read parts of it a few times, and it just reads like a summary of other people's work[1], but if you don't read the appendices, it seems like that all of that other work was also Wolfram's. He's got a nasty habit of saying stuff like "cellullar automata theory teaches..." instead of saying "Marvin Minsky showed that...", as if the theory existed in a vacuum, independently of those who developed it. Wolfram is well-known for claiming other people's work for himself and suing anyone who claims otherwise. That's how he acquired Mathematica, but trying to find the origins of that story is difficult, because he succeeded in suing everyone into silence. [1] Plus a lot of "look at the beautiful pictures... LOOK AT THEM!" He's got a weird sense of mathematical rigour, something akin to believing that whatever the computer computes is right. Probably part of his idea of why it's ok to hide mathematics behind NDAs.
  - 12y ago

mcdonji 12y ago

I thought so too but when I actually tried using "the language" it was more like using an application (excel?). For example there are no sockets. You can't create a hello world protocol. I was disappointed.

Tarang 12y ago

I think its because Stephen Wolfram built it. If anyone else did it it would be super awesome. While I don't share the hate I see this every time with anything 'Wolfram' on HN.