Lucasoato
I've used Mathematica at university, it's so great!
Creating fractals, animations and so on is so easy and
intuitive.The problem though is that Wolfram is a walled
garden. When you think about integrating it in an
enterprise environment, you get hit by such high costs, it
stops making sense. Imagine if they open sourced it, I
feel like their products have so much utility, buried deep
down Wolfram ecosystem and conventions.
|
> orochimaaru
It doesn't make sense even for academia.
Reproducibility is an issue and as we've seen with
recent fraudulent claims in major publications - it's
what is going to be used for verification of
research.Many years back while in grad school I could
not reproduce a result from a paper. Thankfully they
had provided the data as public but not the code. I
emailed the authors and got some matlab code back. My
university didn't have a matlab subscription. Octave
saved me there since the syntax is similar.But with
something like mathematica and the price of it you
will never be able to have a wide verification of the
result if the software is not free.Also, a lot of
things in industry gain traction first in academia
(especially math tools). So unless academic traction
is dealt with mathematica's headway in industry will
remain limited. They are still a profitable company.
So I'm guessing there are deep pocketed clients who
purchase the tooling.
|
> > kridsdale1
The situation you're describing is probably why
Python is the defacto language of Machine Learning
to this day.
|
> > > giancarlostoro
I've noticed an increase in Rust, and I just
googled it (for whatever that's worth) it
seems to be #2 tied with C++ wont be surprised
if it surpasses C++ and eventually gets tied
with Python.
|
> > > > pjmlp
CUDA Oxide is only at 0.2, and NVidia has
almost two decades to catch up, same with
other "Python" frameworks that are
basically bindings to C++ frameworks.Even
the Python GPU JITs only started to be
invested seriously by the big three last
year.It will take a while.
|
> > > > olmo23
Mathematica or MATLAB
|
> > coliveira
Mathematica has a lot of clients in math and
engineering. Traditionally these clients are not
so concerned about software engineering issues you
mention. What Mathematica offers also makes sense
for small firms with a few engineers, because they
can leverage their vast amount of ready to use
functions and libraries. But I agree that for
medium to large size companies it stops making
sense.
|
> > zipy124
This problem is very visible in Physics with
software such as COMSOL, which many papers use.
The licenses are so crazy expensive, that
verifying any paper is difficult.
|
> > alex7o
True but also for a one of piracy exists just use
a cracked copy of it and be done with it
|
> > > Qem
Not practical in research. Doesn't solve the
blackbox reproducibility problem. Also it
makes the act of publishing a paper under your
name practically a crime confession, as it's
easy for companies to comb the literature to
seek people publishing results obtained with
software X without a license.
|
> > > Schlagbohrer
How do you run cracked/pirated copies of
software? I stopped pirating software decades
ago due to malware risks.
|
> > > > woctordho
Download the installer itself in the
official way. Run the keygen in a virtual
machine.
|
> alok-g
Here are some alternatives (some internally use free
Wolfram engine):Reimplementation in Rust:
https://github.com/ad-si/WoxiWLJS Notebook:
https://wljs.ioVS Code extension:
https://github.com/vanbaalon/wolfbook
|
> > srean
There is also SageMath and Mathics. Not
replacements but close.
|
> > IshKebab
> Reimplementation in RustIt's so disappointing to
see CLAUDE.md in projects like these. Basically
rules it out for serious use.
|
> > > adius
Author here: I absolutely do not understand
this mindset.
It has almost 20K unit tests by now and
hundreds of full end-to-end tests of
complicated scripts to ensure it works and
matches the output of Wolframscript. Why does
it matter that I was using Claude to help me
implement it?
|
> > > > mycall
https://github.com/ad-si/Woxi/tree/main/te
stsSpot checking, I don't see any
issues.e.g.
https://github.com/ad-si/Woxi/blob/main/te
sts/list_tests.rs #[test]
fn first() {
assert_eq!(interpret("First[{1, 2,
3}]").unwrap(), "1");
assert_eq!(interpret("First[{a, b,
c}]").unwrap(), "a");
assert_eq!(interpret("First[{True, False,
False}]").unwrap(), "True");
}
|
> > > > theplumber
Are they 20k unit tests or sloppy tests?
Would 100k unit tests make it better?
|
> > > > bonzini
My issue is that Mathematica is
essentially a term rewriting system.
Reimplementing everything in Rust seems to
go against the idea. The derivative
computation is 400 lines of Rust and could
be 20 lines of Mathematica code.
|
> > > > > adius
My theory is that writing as much as
possible in Rust will improve
performance and produce higher-quality
code due to Rust's static typing. So
far, it's been working well, but the
final verdict is still out.
|
> > > > > srean
I have not looked at the
implementation but isn't the idea to
write a Lispy language in Rust (in
other words, Mathematica the language)
and then write the differentiation and
other routines in that.
|
> > > > > > bonzini
No, they're implementing all
functions, all matching etc. in
Rust.
|
> > > > > > UltraSane
Will that be faster? Seems like it
should be a lot faster.
|
> > > > > > Archit3ch
They had to patch the Rust
compiler to natively support
AutoDiff.Contrast with Julia where
it can be a regular Julia library,
|
> > > > > > throwsalj2rttw
I mean you can do autodiff with a
regular library in Rust. Enzyme is
just a very specific type of
autodiff which transforms after
some compilation has taken place.I
don't know that you can match
something speedwise like a JIT or
Expression Templates in rust
though without using something
like Enzyme.
|
> > > > IshKebab
AI has a tendency of "just make it pass!"
(which to be fair you also sometimes see
from junior human devs - maybe where it
learnt from!). Remember that C compiler
which didn't even do basic error checking
because that wasn't checked by the test
suite?A very young project written by AI
means you haven't reviewed the code and
nobody has used it in anger. It might work
perfectly, but my experience of AI so far
says that it won't.
|
> > > > neofrog
It could very well be 20K slop tests
|
> Joel_Mckay
Wolfram did have Visual Studio API integration at one
point, and it was useful reducing algorithmic symbolic
design complexity. However, it was mostly the
academically controversial assumptions that
Mathematica makes that undermined its credibility in
many faculties.For example, when digging into GNU
Octave you will find many of its libraries were built
on peer reviewed legacy code provably reproducible
with prior aerospace published works.The problem with
closed source academic programs isn't features or even
quality, but rather one of traceable Metrology and
scientific rigor. =3
|
> > breezybottom
Most scientific fields have no problem using SAS
or STATA or other black box code. I don't think
that explains Mathematica's problems.
|
> > > Joel_Mckay
Indeed, likely negatively correlated with
other behavioral phenomena
=3https://www.statista.com/chart/4111/do-europ
eans-wash-their-...
|
> brudgers
Wolfram is $4000/seat for a perpetual commercial
license with support. [1] $4000 will only buy a
middling Mac Tool tool chest...and not the tools to
put in it.[1] a personal perpetual license is only
$400.
|
> > nwatson
Cost goes down significantly for subsequent years
personal. Currently at less than $200 yearly.
|
> > > Archit3ch
Unless you need System Modeler, in which case
add another $576 perpetual + $260 annual.There
is a combined license for Mathematica + System
Modeler, but it's "Contact us for pricing".
Mind you, that's still on the Hobbyist tier.
You cannot use its output for anything
commercial.Contrast with Julia's MTK/Dyad that
are free for non-commercial use.
|
> > CamperBob2
Do they still offer a free license on Raspberry
Pi?
|
> > > krackers
Not just on Raspberry Pi, wolfram scripting
engine is free and works on windows or mac
too. You lose the notebook interface, but if
you're just using it as a calculator, it does
the job.
|
> > > > alex7o
Oh that would make a great mcp
|
> > > UncleSlacky
You can also emulate a Pi using QEMU to run
Mathematica (slowly!) on other platforms, see
e.g.https://www.thelinuxvault.net/blog/how-to-
run-the-raspberry-...
|
> > > > adgjlsfhk1
on a Mac you should be able to emulate it
pretty quickly since it's arm to arm
|
> > > > > rcarmo
Last anyone tried that in earnest, the
binary executable formats were of
course incompatible and there were
hardware checks.
|
> amelius
True but on the other hand it is really impressive how
Stephen Wolfram managed to build a viable company
around scientific software.
|
> > jhbadger
Basically he did it by developing the first
version of Mathematica when he was a professor at
the University of Illinois. They were not pleased
(although they've settled since and Wolfram is
still headquartered in Champaign-Urbana near the
campus)
|
> > gus_massa
Impressive indeed, but it makes sense if you call
it "Wolfram-Jupyter" and you notice the guy made
it 20 years before it was cool.
|
> coliveira
I'm aways surprised that there's no open source
language that provides everything you get with Wolfram
language. For example, the level of pattern matching
you can use when defining functions, as well as the
high level of functional composition. It is like
having a mix of APL, Lisp, and Prolog that is very
productive to use.
|
> > zozbot234
From a strict PL perspective, the
Wolfram/Mathematica language is rather based on a
term rewriting paradigm. The languages Maude, Pure
and TXL would be examples of something that's
broadly comparable but more generic. In general,
it turns out to be a fairly niche paradigm that's
not very useful outside of symbolic computing
itself, or related fields such as modeling of PL
syntax and compiler internals.
|
> > jmusall
There is Mathics: https://mathics.org/It doesn't
cover the full standard library of Mathematica but
the syntax is very similar and a lot of
functionality is there.
|
> > nextaccountic
Wolfram language is the easy part to implementIts
standard library is almost impossible to reproduce
in its enterityIf those libraries were like
regular code that got published to Github or
something like that.. like pypi or npm or
crates.io or whatever. And if mathematica had a
lean standard library. It would be very feasible
to implement a clone that's basically compatibleI
mean. Depending on just wolfram rather than random
open source contributors has benefits, for example
it's more resistant to supply chain attacks.
Indeed the npm model is not good. But, it is open,
and that's what enabled for example deno and bun
to have some compatibility with node
|
> > > abacadaba
kimi reproduce this standard lib, make no
mistakes
|
> > > > nextaccountic
Tbh I fully expect someone to get the
proprietary Mathematica code and somehow
launder it through LLMs and pretend
whatever outuput is not legally a
derivative work from the original code,
and then does not need to be bound by
Mathematica license and can be its own
open source projectLike the following
dudes who are doing this, but to a project
that is already open source
(git):https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id
=48468904Except that Wolfram would of
course sue and we might as well see what
the courts has to say about this topic
|
> > raegis
> "...the level of pattern matching you can use
when defining functions, as well as the high level
of functional composition..."This sounds like your
average functional programming language. The
Scicloj community is the first thing to come to
mind (but I assume they don't do symbolic
algebra/calculus like Mathematica does), but I
don't know what you're specifically missing.
|
> geor9e
I loved Mathematica. I was so sad about having to use
Python math packages in industry.
|
> TheRealPomax
IT doesn't even need to be open source, a walled
garden that you can afford is perfectly fine.
Someone's going to find the cracks in the wall
anyway.But a walled garden that costs $400 for
personal use (we're ignoring yearly licensing, because
f that noise) is utter nonsense, and the clearest sign
you have no idea how to sell and then upsell products
to users over the course of several years.
|
lutusp
If Stephen Wolfram really wanted wide adoption of Wolfram
Language, he would give it an open-source license and
release its source. As things stand it's an expensive
walled garden whose costs outweigh its advantages.A quote
from the linked article: " ...year after year building an
ever taller tower of ideas and technology ..."That's an
accurate description of the Wolfram empire -- every year
it becomes a more expensive, less accessible, vertical
tower. Meanwhile, people intent on disseminating useful
knowledge do so by growing horizontally -- Python, Linux,
many others, all open-source.Historical figures would be
astonished at what Wolfram is trying to do -- they would
say, "Wait ... you can't patent mathematics!" No, but you
can try.
|
> david_rugaex
Obviously open source is a significant virtue.
Mathematica has some strength in closed source, I
doubt it could be as self consistent and backwards
compatible if people could depend on the
implementation as the use contract as opposed to the
documentation. It would obviously have had more
features earlier, but would that have made the
perpetual support, cointegration, or documentation
suffer? I'm not blind to the downsides, but I do
perceive upsides, and those may contribute to
Mathematica's niche.
|
mlpicker
The AI assistant complaints track with what I see on my
end. Any general model I throw Wolfram Language at does
noticeably worse than it does on Python. That part isn't
surprising. There just isn't much public Wolfram code to
learn from next to the mountain of Python sitting on
github. It keeps guessing function names that sound
plausible but don't exist. Spent an afternoon last week
fixing hallucinated options on an NDSolve call it gave me.
|
> krackers
>It keeps guessing function names that sound plausible
but don't exist.That's surprising considering how good
their documentation is. A tool using LLM should have
no problem with that. WolframLanguage is almost ideal
for an LLM actually.
|
> > Iolaum
LLM's learn by training on examples more than by
training on documentation. Especially since
examples are usually bigger in data size.
|
steve1977
I always compare the difference between
Mathematica/Wolfram Language and Python to the difference
between Classical Latin and English.I don't really like
English from a linguistic point of view (as a non-native
speaker). It's a hodgepodge of other languages and has so
many exceptions, it's not very elegant. But it's so
ubiquitous and useful that one basically has to know
English today.On the other hand, Latin is beautiful and
pure. There's more rules, but very few exceptions. But
unless you study catholic theology or something along
those lines, it's basically useless.Which one maps to
Wolfram Language and which one to Python is probably
obviously.
|
> schoen
Latin is beautiful, but its purity and regularity may
be overstated because of its prestige.There are
irregular verbs, sometimes with complete suppletive
replacement of principal parts by what used to be
other verbs (e.g. sum, esse, fui, futurus; fero,
ferre, tuli, latum). There are verbs that use passive
forms with active meaning (deponents) or perfect forms
with present meaning (defectives).There are arguably
completely missing forms in the verbal inflection
system (the Romans knew that some forms plausibly
"should" exist, especially based on a Greek
grammatical model, but simply didn't have them!).There
is sometimes unpredictability in which noun case
should be used with a particular verb.The noun
declensions are apparently based on two different sets
of Indo-European noun inflection paradigms, so nouns
with similar nominative forms can end up being
declined very differently.There are ambiguities where
different noun forms coincide, which can even create
parsing ambiguities in literature (like confusion
between ablatives and datives, many of which look
identical).The extent to which the perfect stem of a
verb can be predicted from the present is limited, as
sometimes stem reduplication is used, but sometimes
just suffixation of something like -vi.There are
loanwords, even classically, from Etruscan, Greek, and
to a lesser extent other Mediterranean languages (just
thinking of that "hodgepodge" issue).The meanings of
purpose clauses with the verbs of fearing are arguably
backwards from the English point of view (although I
think the Latin version does make plenty of
sense).Native and nonnative speakers couldn't easily
agree in antiquity about whether vowel length should
be contrastive and (I think) whether consonant
aspiration was phonemic. I guess the native speakers'
opinion should matter more, except there promptly
became such huge numbers of non-native speakers that
they started to have a really humongous influence on
the language.There are spelling changes even within
the classical period, so there isn't quite one single
classical Latin orthography.I guess there are many
fewer irregular verbs overall compared to Germanic
languages (which historically have had up to hundreds
of at least partly irregular verbs). But if we want to
count unpredictability of Latin perfect stems (which
is somewhat akin to the main source of irregularity in
the Germanic verbs: stem changes) as a kind of
irregularity, Latin will also have quite a lot of
these.
|
> seanhunter
It's a nice analogy but Latin has tons of weird idioms
and exceptions. Been a while since I did it, but1)the
locative vs the ablative, and the locative only
existing for a few words2)the irregular verbs such as
sum, eo etc, irregular nouns such as deus, aqua etc,
and there's a bunch of irregular like adjectives and
stuff that I don't remember3)indeclinable nouns that
just don't decline at all and are the same in all
cases. I think the word for "morning" is like this but
it's been a very long time. There are a few words that
work this way anyway.4) Words like "castrum" which
just mean something totally different in the plural to
the singular. "Castrum" means a fort, but the plural
"castra" doesn't mean many forts, it means a
(singular) military camp.5) Words like "Saturnalia"
(festivals of Saturn) which only exist in the plural.
As far as I know you can't say one festival of Saturn
in latin.
|
> > schoen
For (3), the word you're thinking of is "mane" 'in
the morning', which looks very much like an
ablative but which doesn't have any other forms.
There are definitely other words like that, such
as "fas" 'right, propriety, justice'.For (5),
these are called pluralia tantum (singular
"plurale
tantum").https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurale_tan
tumI gave some examples of Latin irregularities
elsewhere in the thread, and I like your examples
too!
|
> gucci-on-fleek
> Which one maps to Wolfram Language and which one to
Python is probably obviously.I've programmed quite a
bit with both Python and Mathematica, and I've read
through your comment a few times, but I still can't
figure out which is which. Both languages are
hodgepodges of other languages with lots of special
cases (which I would consider to be a good thing since
it gives you so much flexibility).
|
> sayamqazi
Almost all languages have exceptions and traditional
grammars are just academic study of grammars.
|
leephillips
Scientists: better to stay
away.https://lwn.net/Articles/1023299/
|
Vaslo
I remember using it in my college days in the 90s.People
joining my company from academia usually know Mathematica
along with Python or R.When we tell them we don't use
Mathematica they are sometimes initially concerned. They
are typically quite opinionated and I have yet to hear an
employee complain about no longer having access to
Mathematica. Or SPSS, SAS, or MiniTab for that matter.
|
> electriclove
What do you use at your company?
|
stblack
I'm a huge fan of Mathematica; I've been a subscriber for
many years. There's much to love about the product, but
its AI assistant isn't among them.Claude Caude is much
better at Mathematica than Wolfram's own AI assistant. I
think they flat-out acknowledge the very limited abilities
of Mathematica's AI assistant in this version 15
announcement.The Wolfram AI assistant is so bad I
unsubscribed from it. By the sounds of it, a basic AI
assistant is offered included with subscriptions now. I
feel it's borderline criminal they were charging for their
hallucinatory AI assistant in the past.
|
> raincole
Honestly I've found even Gemini Flash is better than
Wolfram assistant...But that's fine. Mathematica
client supports openrouter as LLM provider anyway so
we can use whatever we want.
|
SilverElfin
Does anyone use this outside of college classes? It looks
so great in these demos but I never hear of companies
using it.
|
> alok-g
I have used at work a lot for some projects (device
physics modeling stuff)
|
> mackeye
it has the nicest calculator syntax (imho) among the
tools i've tried (python/julia/array
langs/matlab/etc...) with extensive docs for each
function and a nice notebook interface, but i've never
written a program in it that was longer than one
expression.
|
> Postosuchus
It used to be pretty popular for mathematical modeling
in quantitative finance.
|
> > david_rugaex
I work in quantitative finance. I do the vast vast
majority of my algebra and stochastic calculus in
Mathematica, and lots of ad hoc data
visualization.
|
> afolkest
Not industry, but it's pretty popular among
theoretical physics researchers.
|
> > jjtheblunt
I had it in an engineering inner sanctum of Apple.
had used it since it came out in 1988 on campus in
Illinois, and folks in Apple definitely knew it.
Not sure who all was doing what with it.
|
> > > Grosvenor
Steve Jobs and Stephen Wolfram were friends
for years. Mathematica shipped preinstalled on
early NeXT systems.SJ recommended some of the
UI bits of the notebook. Particularly the
separators between cells.
|
> > > > Grosvenor
How could I forget this! He also
recommended the name.Wolfram had come up
with some normal techie names "computron",
"math-o-matic" or whatever. SJ said No
those suck, use something simple like
Mathematica.
|
> > > > raegis
I used Mathematica on a NeXT computer back
in 1991. It was a beautiful machine to
work on. I did a student project where I
simulated the flow of the boundary of a
plane region over time (like how the shape
of a drop of oil in water changes over
time) and it was very, very easy to write
in Mathematica with cool graphics.
|
> > > > jjtheblunt
(Theo Gray is in there too; he built the
notebook interface, was introduced by SJ
to show it at some event. Theo's parents
were math profs in Urbana and I studied
under his dad one summer, house-sat, and I
too had NeXTstep access and Mathematica
since it was ubiquitous there)
|
> > markgall
Still nowadays? My impression is that in (pure)
math it's lost most of its market share in the
last few years. But maybe that's only in my
circles.
|
> > > ahnick
what do you or others use instead?
|
> > > > markgall
Probably the most general-purpose one is
SageMath, which is open-source and
basically Python with a ton of
sophisticated math stuff built into it.
Everything I used to do in Mathematica I
now do in sage, and I don't think I'm the
only one. Probably field-dependent
though.Of course there is a whole
constellation of more specialized things
in certain fields, that has come a long
way in the last 15 years. So people
needing things like that no longer kludge
things together in Mathematica.
|
> > > > > bloaf
Does SageMath use Sympy, or is there
some other integrator built in? Last I
heard Sympy was one of the worst
performers, even among other open
source
CASs.https://www.12000.org/my_notes/CA
S_integration_tests/reports...
|
> > > > > > pmarin
It used Maxima many years ago.
|
> > > > zozbot234
Maple would be the main proprietary
alternative but yes, there's also
SageMath.
|
prenx4x
Hissab - https://hissab.io is a Free and opensource
alternative to Wolfram
|
> alok-g
Here are some other alternatives (some internally use
free Wolfram engine):Reimplementation in Rust:
https://github.com/ad-si/WoxiWLJS Notebook:
https://wljs.ioVS Code extension:
https://github.com/vanbaalon/wolfbook
|
> > bloaf
How do they stack up doing actual computer algebra
things like symbolic
integration?https://www.12000.org/my_notes/CAS_int
egration_tests/reports...Note that alternative
open source solvers like Fricas fail 10x the
integrals in that corpus.
|
> > > pkaye
Rubi is just rule based integration. So its
like looking up a book of integral formulas
and encoding them as rules. It does mean you
need a minimum number of other features like
partial fraction decomposition, polynomial
factoring so it demonstrates some capability.
Many of the other Mathematica like CAS end up
using the Rubi rules themselves.But indefinite
integration is just a small aspect of CAS
capabilities. What about integration over a
line or surface, definite integration and
dealing with singularities, differential
equations, solving equations under
assumptions, simplifying equations.
|
> > > > bloaf
The same guy found Sympy was similarly far
behind in differential equations (although
Maple edges out Mathematica
here):https://www.12000.org/my_notes/CAS_o
de_tests/index.htmHe does a few other
side-by-side comparisons but doesn't
include open source engines in them.
|
> > > alok-g
The bottom two are based on Wolfram engine
itself, so would fair the same as Mathematica.
I do not know about the first one.
|
> ForceBru
According to https://github.com/rawbytess/hissab, it's
not even close to being an alternative to Wolfram.
Hissab is described as "A strict, unit-aware
natural-language calculator" and its syntax looks
nothing like Wolfram. It reminds me of Wolfram Alpha,
though.
|
> > prenx4x
Its not trying to achieve a feature parity with
wolfram or mimic it. Its just an alternative to do
calculations and may meet somewhere in the middle.
|
everyone
I just learned that Stephen Wolfram himself is a bit of a
crank apparently.
https://youtu.be/fO9iRDPXvT4?si=CbCjBtOSM5JhgYUF
|
> Maro
This is well known, old news.I would not call him a
crank, he's just an "independent physicist". He is a
very successful and wealthy businessman thanks to
Mathematica, with $100Ms of wealth presumably, and he
choses to do physics in his own way, pursuing subjects
that he finds interesting, in ways he finds
interesting. And he writes about his work and himself
in grandiose ways, usually comparing himself to Newton
and Einstein.Nothing major has come out of his
research, other then one of his co-workers proving
that one of the simple CAs is Turing complete.Most
academic physicists ignore him, but that's fine.
Personally, I think we need more people like Wolfram
who are doing totally independent research, with their
own funds. Statistically, something unexpectedly good
could come out of it!His latest research subject is
Ruliology:https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2026/01/
what-is-ruliolog...
|
> > zozbot234
> I would not call him a crank> And he writes
about his work and himself in grandiose ways,
usually comparing himself to Newton and Einstein
... Nothing major has come out of his researchokay
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> > > ACS_Solver
Wolfram is definitely not a crank. Cranks do
not understand scientific methods and also
have a minimal understanding of whatever field
they're trying to be active in. Like trying to
push physics theories while demonstrably
failing to understand high school level
calculus. Cranks are also conspiracy theorists
who inevitably believe knowledge like theirs
is being suppressed.Wolfram does display a
similar ego to cranks. He tends to place his
cellular automata at the same tier of
importance as general relativity or
wave-particle duality. But unlike cranks, he
doesn't say that Einstein, Feynman and other
greats are wrong, he doesn't "prove" his
theories by math-looking babble that is
definitely not math. He loves cellular
automata and so much of what he writes is more
like philosophy of science than science. He
will model certain processes as an automaton
and then he jumps from that to every natural
process being a cellular automaton.Eccentric,
definitely, and most of his physics research
isn't accepted but he's several orders above
the level of crank.
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> > > geertj
The word 'crank' is a dismissive insult.
Wolfram is definitely eccentric, probably hard
to work with, but also undoubtedly smart. What
good does it do to dismiss him? He's doing
nothing wrong spending his own money the way
he wants to. And who knows something will come
out of this. Similar to GP I'd like to see
more of this.
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> > > > Qem
> He's doing nothing wrong spending his
own money the way he wants to.Except
stealing credit for work done by his
employees. Read about his lawsuit against
Matthew Cook.
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> > > > UltraSane
A crank is a real pattern of behavior
where a person tries to prove things they
don't have enough knowledge and
intelligence to even understand correctly.
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> themafia
It's easy to find Wolfram tedious but I've not seem
him be particularly disruptive to other efforts nor
did his crankery lead to his current success. He's on
the same level with Eric Weinstein. Your best bet is
to ignore them.
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> > mr_mitm
I'd like to push back on that comparison. At least
unlike Weinstein, Wolfram produced a genuinely
impressive and useful piece of software, which
empowers scientists and students worldwide. While
his physics work is a little questionable and not
too interesting, he doesn't seem to care too much
what other people think. He'd never latch on to
some podcast bro to give his ideas a wider reach.
All Weinstein does is drop big names left and
right and whine about how Big String Theory has
taken over modern physics and suppresses free
thinkers.
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> > > themafia
That's fair. What I was trying to get at is
that Weinstein is also independently
successful albeit in a completely unrelated
field. There may be small parts of truth in
his critique of the field but GU is just so
completely batty and ignorant it's worth
discounting his analysis here entirely.I find
greater fault in the pushing of his
"Intellectual Dark Web" pseudo-cult. So I
would agree he's actually a contemptible
character but for slightly different reasons.
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> > > > HSO
> independently successful albeit in a
completely unrelated fieldwhat field?
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> > > > > tessellated
Talking Bullshyt. See:
https://anathem.fandom.com/wiki/Bulshy
tt
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> > > > > themafia
My understanding is he works in
finance.
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> UltraSane
Wolfram is too smart to be a true crank, but his ego
is even bigger than his IQ and he thinks he should
rank up there with Newton and Einstein.
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> > jmcqk6
yeah he's not a crank, just an asshole. Taking
credit for work did by his employees, to the point
of suing them. The only significant discovery to
come out of his CA work was completed by an
employee, who wolfram sued when he published a
paper and gave a talk on it.
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> lutusp
The linked video is a must-see -- it's one of those
rare video essays that shed more light than heat.
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a-dub
symbolic music features are interesting! they should add
chroma!
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> sbrother
I saw those and got excited; I've been using
Mathematica for decades and do a lot of work with
symbolic music.Unfortunately they are extremely
surface level in this release. It looks like there
isn't even any ability to load/export MusicXML, kind
of weird low level primitives and zero interesting
higher level functions. Hopefully they keep iterating
on it but I don't think it'll be useful for my
workflow right now.
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UltraSane
The mathematica solve function is a lot of fun to use.
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jrflowers
I like the changes they've made to the backend in the AI
era because now if you input "weight of 1 cup of sugar"
into WolframAlpha it says 202 grams and if you put in
"weight of 1 cup of sucrose" it says 376 grams. I would
rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by
mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could
comprehend it. - Harry Emerson Fosdick
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> scapp
Hmmm, it could definitely be clearer. It looks like
it's using the bulk density for "sugar" (so including
the air between the crystals) and the actual density
for "sucrose".
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> zamadatix
The AI gave you as right a reasonable answer as could
be made for the ambiguity of the questions, try asking
why the answers are different when you thought they'd
be the same (or check out a pre-AI answer
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceDiscussion/comments
/2fqyx...)
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> > jrflowers
It's not a big deal, it's just the wrong tool for
the job. "Sugar" and "table sugar" have different
answers, inputting "sugar" and then clicking on
"sugar, granulated" answers 4.2 grams because that
action causes it to start mixing up teaspoons and
cups, etc. It is nice having all these extra
answers, variety is the spice of life
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> > > zamadatix
Nothing to do with mixing up units (or even
the back end), just plain ol' terrible UX/UI
on the website. E.g., ask for "weight of 2 tsp
of sugar" and then also click to set the type
selector to "sugar, granulated". It'll still
show the result as being for a query about 1
tsp of granulated sugar - but why?This is
because clicking the "granulated sugar"
selection just appends an override string to
the URL, turning the query into a very generic
one for "weight of granulated sugar" using API
style query semantics. The original input text
is still rendered in the box because it was
still left at the start of the query string
and the override isn't in input text form to
replace it. One can see the same result by
directly putting "weight of granulated sugar"
in the input box, where 1 tsp is just the
default quantity used when generating examples
with unspecified amounts for most
ingredients.If I were to guess, this was
several independently made UX/UI decisions
("leave the originally structured input text
in the box as modifiers are clicked", "have
default quantities of a material to still
generate an example result when a generic
query is made", "suggest different types of
material to work with", and "a dropdown to
select the material should be a modifier")
which made sense for isolated components but,
later, the components were combined in this
flow and nobody tested to see the aggregate
behavior no longer makes any sense.
Ironically, the issue would likely not exist
if modifying the query for the new type was
just given to LLM to figure out dynamically in
the back end instead of trying to explicitly
code the behaviors in the front end.Wolfram
product front ends have historically been
broken in little wonky ways like this. Hell,
they had a completely half-assed "dark mode"
in Mathematica's GUI client until 2025 and
just now have added actual visual themes to
notebooks in 2026 - the attention tends to be
given on the parts beneath the covers.
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exe34
Dear diary, today I discovered Wolfram Mathematica 15.
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