3 ms·

Who uses the wolfram language? It seems pretty expressive and powerful... but I don't really see a strong case for adoption.

evv 11y ago
I've only ever seen or heard of it being used by Stephen Wolfram. It must be fun to have a huge engineering team to help support what is essentially a pet project. Maybe they will someday release something with general availability and competitive pricing, but for now it seems to be behind a walled garden. But I wouldn't worry. If Wolfram Language truly exposes any novel concepts, then it is only a matter of time until the open source community implements those features for everyone else to use. It's a shame, but I'm skeptical Wolfram will ever see the inherent value of getting real software into the world. From what I've seen, he would much rather build proprietary toys that only he can use, rather than building open-source tools that can be ubiquitous. If Wolfram has cool toys and isn't willing to share, then so be it. The open source community can build our own cool toys.
- RootDynasty 11y ago
  The language part of the Wolfram Language is still really kludgy to use and quite slow. Even doing simple things like writing a function or an if statement is painful. What it does have going for it is the biggest, baddest standard library available. imo, the language would be much more compelling if the syntax was redesigned from the ground up and made easier to debug (the error messages in Mathematica are next to useless)
  - akater 11y ago
    I'm sorry but your comment will be grossly misleading to people unfamiliar with the language. There's absolutely nothing painful about If and Function. However, I must note that in a rule-based language both are used far more sparingly than they would be in an imperative, or even functional language. I found myself moving from If to Replace, for example.
yoklov 11y ago
Angelo Pesce (aka c0de517e) has written about using it as a rendering engineer on his blog[0]. I've heard of others using it in similar scenerios as well, but don't have a link to provide for them. [0]: http://c0de517e.blogspot.com/2013/10/wolframs-mathematica-101.html http://c0de517e.blogspot.com/2013/10/wolframs-mathematica-10... (among a couple other posts about using it for specific tasks. He also spends some time defending it on there as well)
tedsanders 11y ago
I use the language and I enjoy it. As a physicist, I find a lot of value in (1) its ability to do math, (2) its powerful functional nature, and (3) its broad and well-documented standard library. To me, these advantages are well worth the $80 student price I paid years ago. I know that some of the community here dislikes the language for costing money, being closed source, and being marketed by Stephen Wolfram, but to me, it's worth it. I'm often impressed at how quickly I can accomplish complex data analysis tasks. I think the fact that the built-in libraries are consistent in their architecture/documentation adds a surprisingly large amount of value because it makes it easy to do new things quickly. And of course, I find value in other languages too.
jgamman 11y ago
you're not the target market - every scientist and mathematician initially and recently home hobbyists. BTW once you leave uni, paying to be productive is the easiest decision you'll ever make - half arsed and free isn't all it's cracked up to be.

evv 11y ago

I've only ever seen or heard of it being used by Stephen Wolfram. It must be fun to have a huge engineering team to help support what is essentially a pet project. Maybe they will someday release something with general availability and competitive pricing, but for now it seems to be behind a walled garden. But I wouldn't worry. If Wolfram Language truly exposes any novel concepts, then it is only a matter of time until the open source community implements those features for everyone else to use. It's a shame, but I'm skeptical Wolfram will ever see the inherent value of getting real software into the world. From what I've seen, he would much rather build proprietary toys that only he can use, rather than building open-source tools that can be ubiquitous. If Wolfram has cool toys and isn't willing to share, then so be it. The open source community can build our own cool toys.

RootDynasty 11y ago
The language part of the Wolfram Language is still really kludgy to use and quite slow. Even doing simple things like writing a function or an if statement is painful. What it does have going for it is the biggest, baddest standard library available. imo, the language would be much more compelling if the syntax was redesigned from the ground up and made easier to debug (the error messages in Mathematica are next to useless)
- akater 11y ago
  I'm sorry but your comment will be grossly misleading to people unfamiliar with the language. There's absolutely nothing painful about If and Function. However, I must note that in a rule-based language both are used far more sparingly than they would be in an imperative, or even functional language. I found myself moving from If to Replace, for example.

yoklov 11y ago

Angelo Pesce (aka c0de517e) has written about using it as a rendering engineer on his blog[0]. I've heard of others using it in similar scenerios as well, but don't have a link to provide for them. [0]: http://c0de517e.blogspot.com/2013/10/wolframs-mathematica-101.html http://c0de517e.blogspot.com/2013/10/wolframs-mathematica-10... (among a couple other posts about using it for specific tasks. He also spends some time defending it on there as well)

tedsanders 11y ago

I use the language and I enjoy it. As a physicist, I find a lot of value in (1) its ability to do math, (2) its powerful functional nature, and (3) its broad and well-documented standard library. To me, these advantages are well worth the $80 student price I paid years ago. I know that some of the community here dislikes the language for costing money, being closed source, and being marketed by Stephen Wolfram, but to me, it's worth it. I'm often impressed at how quickly I can accomplish complex data analysis tasks. I think the fact that the built-in libraries are consistent in their architecture/documentation adds a surprisingly large amount of value because it makes it easy to do new things quickly. And of course, I find value in other languages too.

jgamman 11y ago

you're not the target market - every scientist and mathematician initially and recently home hobbyists. BTW once you leave uni, paying to be productive is the easiest decision you'll ever make - half arsed and free isn't all it's cracked up to be.