5 ms·

Mathematica demos sure look pretty [0]. But I recently tried to get actual work done with Mathematica and found the experience utterly ridiculous. The high lev

by maho 12y ago

Mathematica demos sure look pretty [0]. But I recently tried to get actual work done with Mathematica and found the experience utterly ridiculous. The high level functions, while nice for demos, never quite do what you need. Want to display data vs. time with errorbars around the data? Sorry, no function for this completely exotic use case, please hack a DateListPlot on top of an ErrorListPlot [1]. The WolframAlpha integration "transparently" interprets code for you in the background. This interpretation can change any day [2] and leaves you guessing why your notebook doesn't run anymore. The bugs I encountered were severe: One of the output function swallows the "-" sign if the result is between -1 and 0 [3]. Currently I am battling file corruption of notebooks that are saved on network drives and open while the drive is disattached/reattached. Had it not been for the awesome support by the mathematica. stackexchange.com community, I would have quit Mathematica completely. Now I vowed to use it only for small hacks. And, if I want to impress someone, for demos. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjCWdsrVcBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjCWdsrVcBM [1] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/18962 http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/18962 [2] The input Quantity[1, "Kelvins"] is interpreted by Mathematica itself and yields an object equivalent to "1 Kelvins". The input Quantity[1, "Kelvin"] however is interpreted "transparently" by Wolfram Alpha. A few weeks ago it evaluated to "1 KelvinsDifference", but now has changed to "1 Kelvins". Don't get me started on the KelvinsDifference vs. Kelvins thing, which are both represented by the same symbol to maximize your confusion when your unit conversions are failing... [3] http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/65600 http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/65600

leephillips 12y ago
Really interesting, detailed comment. The problem is not that Mathematica has bugs - all complex software has bugs (except TeX). The problem is that you can't fix it, or even see how it works, because the source is secret. Nothing will get fixed until the company decides to fix it. Access to source is not an ideological imperative, it's a practical necessity.
- cpach 12y ago
  I’m not convinced open source would really help. I get the feeling that Mathematica’s underlying philosophy just isn’t a good fit for practical programming.
  - JacobEdelman 12y ago
    I disagree. If it was open source I think enough people would write libraries for it (or add-ons or whatever they would be called) that most if not everything could be done with functions found online. In the rare event that they could not be done you could just create your own. This is similar to my annoyance over Wolfram Alpha being server side when some sort of client side solution would be way better but would involve the source code being available.
    - cpach 12y ago
      Sure, some limitations could be mitigated this way. But being open source does not in itself make it a good language/platform.
      - ics 12y ago
        This is a point that many people seem to skip when discussing Mathematica. I think it would be great if they open sourced all of the code but I doubt that that alone would bring a surge of new package developers. If anything, I would expect it to bring IPython, Sage, etc. people to pick around for useful bits to reimplement in other projects.
    - gus_massa 12y ago
      You are describing the LaTeX model. You have a lot of packages. When you are lucky all the packages get well together. If you are unlucky the pacakes are slightly incompatible. And if you need to use \usepacage[spanish]{babel} then you are out of luck. Two recent problems I had with LaTeX: * If you put a \dfrac inside a table, the table thinks that the fraction is smaller and the line of the borders of the table collide with the numbers. * If you need a different header height in your first page, you need some black magic macrology to get a not so good solution.
tyilo 12y ago
For the units thing, you might want to take a look at http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/15338/simpler-input-for-the-new-unit-support/30651#3065 http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/15338/simpler... Also I have this in my init.m: Unprotect[WolframAlpha]; ClearAll[WolframAlpha]; WolframAlpha[x__] := Null; Protect[WolframAlpha];
taliesinb 12y ago
> The high level functions, while nice for demos, never quite do what you need. Want to display data vs. time with errorbars around the data? Sorry, no function for this completely exotic use case, please hack a DateListPlot on top of an ErrorListPlot [1]. 'Never' seems like quite a generalization. What about e.g. Classify and Predict, or FormFunction, or Interpreter, or Nearest? Do those all not do quite what you need? Conversely, does other software do better, on average, in 'doing what one wants'? Which software? There are gaps, definitely, one small example you've pointed out. My pet peeve, for example, is that it is unnecessarily difficult to map colors and sizes onto graph vertices based on vertex properties, which I needed to do for [1]. Still, the scope of visualization functionality is so vast [4] that it's not surprising there are gaps (which we continue to plug, the whole language is a never ending project). And having users report to us what they want lets us prioritize those things. Anyway, clearly DateListPlot should learn about error bars, and I'm sure in a year or two it will. Although it is frustrating you can't just go in there and tweak the source code yourself, I agree. > Don't get me started on the KelvinsDifference vs. Kelvins thing, which are both represented by the same symbol to maximize your confusion when your unit conversions are failing... I think Quantities should probably gain a little box, like DateObjects have [2], that lets you mouse-over for more information, which should make this problem easier to diagnose. But the distinction is apparently important [3], although I don't want to "get you started" :-). Either way, Alpha shouldn't change its interpretation from under you, that's definitely a bug. > http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/65600 http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/65600 Unfortunate, but fixed within a day of being reported! 10.0.2 has passed many weeks of SQA and will ship shortly. So at least this bug will only have been around for 0.0.2 versions :-) [1] http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/04/data-science-of-the-facebook-world/ http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/04/data-science-of-the-f... [2] http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/DateObject.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/DateObject.html, http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Entity.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Entity.html [3] http://reference.wolfram.com/language/tutorial/TemperatureUnits.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/tutorial/TemperatureUn... [4] http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/DataVisualization.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/DataVisualizatio..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/FunctionVisualization.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/FunctionVisualiz..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/ChartingAndInformationVisualization.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/ChartingAndInfor..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/MapsAndCartography.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/MapsAndCartograp..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/DynamicVisualization.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/DynamicVisualiza..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/GraphicsOptionsAndStyling.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/GraphicsOptionsA..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/GraphicsInteractivityAndDrawing.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/GraphicsInteract..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/SymbolicGraphicsLanguage.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/SymbolicGraphics..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/ImportingAndExporting.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/ImportingAndExpo...

by maho 12y ago

leephillips 12y ago

Really interesting, detailed comment. The problem is not that Mathematica has bugs - all complex software has bugs (except TeX). The problem is that you can't fix it, or even see how it works, because the source is secret. Nothing will get fixed until the company decides to fix it. Access to source is not an ideological imperative, it's a practical necessity.

cpach 12y ago
I’m not convinced open source would really help. I get the feeling that Mathematica’s underlying philosophy just isn’t a good fit for practical programming.
- JacobEdelman 12y ago
  I disagree. If it was open source I think enough people would write libraries for it (or add-ons or whatever they would be called) that most if not everything could be done with functions found online. In the rare event that they could not be done you could just create your own. This is similar to my annoyance over Wolfram Alpha being server side when some sort of client side solution would be way better but would involve the source code being available.
  - cpach 12y ago
    Sure, some limitations could be mitigated this way. But being open source does not in itself make it a good language/platform.
    - ics 12y ago
      This is a point that many people seem to skip when discussing Mathematica. I think it would be great if they open sourced all of the code but I doubt that that alone would bring a surge of new package developers. If anything, I would expect it to bring IPython, Sage, etc. people to pick around for useful bits to reimplement in other projects.
  - gus_massa 12y ago
    You are describing the LaTeX model. You have a lot of packages. When you are lucky all the packages get well together. If you are unlucky the pacakes are slightly incompatible. And if you need to use \usepacage[spanish]{babel} then you are out of luck. Two recent problems I had with LaTeX: * If you put a \dfrac inside a table, the table thinks that the fraction is smaller and the line of the borders of the table collide with the numbers. * If you need a different header height in your first page, you need some black magic macrology to get a not so good solution.

tyilo 12y ago

For the units thing, you might want to take a look at http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/15338/simpler-input-for-the-new-unit-support/30651#3065 http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/15338/simpler... Also I have this in my init.m: Unprotect[WolframAlpha]; ClearAll[WolframAlpha]; WolframAlpha[x__] := Null; Protect[WolframAlpha];

taliesinb 12y ago

> The high level functions, while nice for demos, never quite do what you need. Want to display data vs. time with errorbars around the data? Sorry, no function for this completely exotic use case, please hack a DateListPlot on top of an ErrorListPlot [1]. 'Never' seems like quite a generalization. What about e.g. Classify and Predict, or FormFunction, or Interpreter, or Nearest? Do those all not do quite what you need? Conversely, does other software do better, on average, in 'doing what one wants'? Which software? There are gaps, definitely, one small example you've pointed out. My pet peeve, for example, is that it is unnecessarily difficult to map colors and sizes onto graph vertices based on vertex properties, which I needed to do for [1]. Still, the scope of visualization functionality is so vast [4] that it's not surprising there are gaps (which we continue to plug, the whole language is a never ending project). And having users report to us what they want lets us prioritize those things. Anyway, clearly DateListPlot should learn about error bars, and I'm sure in a year or two it will. Although it is frustrating you can't just go in there and tweak the source code yourself, I agree. > Don't get me started on the KelvinsDifference vs. Kelvins thing, which are both represented by the same symbol to maximize your confusion when your unit conversions are failing... I think Quantities should probably gain a little box, like DateObjects have [2], that lets you mouse-over for more information, which should make this problem easier to diagnose. But the distinction is apparently important [3], although I don't want to "get you started" :-). Either way, Alpha shouldn't change its interpretation from under you, that's definitely a bug. > http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/65600 http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/65600 Unfortunate, but fixed within a day of being reported! 10.0.2 has passed many weeks of SQA and will ship shortly. So at least this bug will only have been around for 0.0.2 versions :-) [1] http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/04/data-science-of-the-facebook-world/ http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/04/data-science-of-the-f... [2] http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/DateObject.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/DateObject.html, http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Entity.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Entity.html [3] http://reference.wolfram.com/language/tutorial/TemperatureUnits.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/tutorial/TemperatureUn... [4] http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/DataVisualization.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/DataVisualizatio..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/FunctionVisualization.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/FunctionVisualiz..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/ChartingAndInformationVisualization.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/ChartingAndInfor..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/MapsAndCartography.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/MapsAndCartograp..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/DynamicVisualization.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/DynamicVisualiza..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/GraphicsOptionsAndStyling.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/GraphicsOptionsA..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/GraphicsInteractivityAndDrawing.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/GraphicsInteract..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/SymbolicGraphicsLanguage.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/SymbolicGraphics..., http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/ImportingAndExporting.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/ImportingAndExpo...