Lots of froth, lots of buzz, lots of hype. Few facts, few examples. It's actually hard to comment on, as there's so little to get hold of. Standard Wolfram fare, rally (still waiting for CAs to take over the world), but always disappointing from someone evidently so smart.
Oh, and if Mathematica is the basis of the "Wolfram language", and this is the universal computing language of our new "interconnected brain", I'm leaving for another universe. Unless the boy who cried wolf really has cornered one this time.
What Wolfram says is nonsense but what he produces is still good.
Wolfram Alpha was massively over-hyped and billed as a Google-killer. It is not remotely that, but it's still an incredibly useful and inimitable product.
But I do grant him the enthusiasm of the forever hacker. I read the article and it came through as someone that had a breakthrough and just wants to talk about it.
Yep, I don't get why Wolfram language would replace APIs we already have in place.
Because it's in natural language? WolframAlpha demonstrates (unsurprisingly) that it's still finicky. You still have to do just as much work to ensure connected services are working together properly.
Because--according to universal computation--it covers the entire computable world? So does any Turing-complete language.
I do see this as another cool thing along the lines of IPython Notebooks or JS Fiddle where you can quickly hook up to services and share the results. Uniquely, WolframAlpha's datasets and some of Mathematica's features. So it'd be nice for homework sets or Bret Victor-esque reactive documents (see http://worrydream.com/Tangle/).
Bombastic, long winded and narcissistic. On target for Stephen Wolfram.
But, if you've used mathematica it is the closest thing we have right now to the star trek computer. In a single line I can get solutions to complex problems that would take days in Ruby, Lisp or Haskell. It is the same distance again as Lisp is from C.
In fact, many of the failures you see write-ups on HN I've been able to model and solve in a few minutes with MMA. In particular the rap genius Heroku queue issue.
In a single line I can get solutions to complex problems that would take days in Ruby, Lisp or Haskell. It is the same distance again as Lisp is from C.
In fact, many of the failures you see write-ups on HN I've been able to model and solve in a few minutes with MMA. In particular the rap genius Heroku queue issue.
Can you elaborate and/or provide a thorough example of this? I'm curious.
I have to generally agree here, although my experience has mostly been with Wolfram Alpha. I'm continually amazed at how easily it lets me grapple with optimization problems or solving for different variables (when I barely remember how to do them myself).
However, Mathematica has always felt a bit niche to me. I wish it was more of an open source project like Octave, because I think the approach is awesome but too often I feel constrained by Wolfram's way of looking at things. If I could combine Matlab, Go, Python, Mathematica, Excel and (yikes) php for it's hands-on-get-@#!$-done-facility, that would be my ideal language.
An entertaining read, but as an enthusiast of NKS-style science (and ohmygod bias! someone at Wolfram Research) I don't think the review is all that intellectually substantive: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3974503
It'll be neat when Wolfram uses their (his?) almighty genius to utterly change the world of computing. It'll also be neat when they implement basic undo/redo functionality in Mathematica.
Srsly. It is unbelievable that they didn't fix this in Version 9. In many ways MMA is incredibly sophisticated software, but it lacks this most obvious of features.
You can do awesome stuff with their mathematical based tools. There are tools for statistics, conversions between units, calculation with dates & times, and a lot more. Look for yourself at http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/
Now, they also have the data. Like weather data, about media(movies/music), about languages, about media, about stock and also a lot more.
But for developers there is a problem, you can't build apps with their platform. For example you can't really store or receive data, and there are more practical problems.
So I think that they already solved the practical problems. Because they are developing software themselves this way. So for making it friendly for developers they only have to build some frontend for it.
Excuse the sarcasm but Mathematica is unjustifiably expensive to be general purpose and ubiquitous and I'm sure any derivative or superior tool will be as well.
I'm a Wolfram science summer school instructor, so I'm in a position to see the kinds of trends there are towards NKS-style methods. It's slow, but definitely there. Some of it is directly inspired, some of it is 'convergent evolution'.
Here's a very high-level and eclectic list of themes and specific research directions I can remember off-hand: agent-based modeling in economics and operational research, game theory automata in evolutionary biology, lattice gas methods in fluid dynamics, tessellation-based approaches to solving PDAs, L-systems in architectural design, logic automata for programming array-based computers, cellular automata-based PRNGs for stream ciphers, program search for finding lock-free concurrent algorithms, rBMs as used in deep learning.
In fact, I used an exhaustive NKS-style search the other day to find novel data query primitives (i.e. what other functions live in the type-signature space that MapReduce occupies?).
I don't know, and it certainly feels kind of silly reading the prologue where it promises to reinvent everything, but I found that book to be fascinating and thought provoking. It didn't change the world but a lot of people are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, there's a lot of good stuff in there. If he had renamed it "Cellular Automata are fun!" or something less bombastic, it would be an instant classic.
Also, I think the key insight is pretty deep -- systems are either trivially simple, or limitlessly complex, once you reach a (very low) level of complexity, you can do pretty much anything.
I wouldn't say Wolfram himself has a large following in the sciences. At least in my area (math and engineering) he is actually widely and heavily criticized. However, some of the things his company makes are widely used. Mathematica is a genuinely wonderful tool (if you have deep pockets) and Alpha is also very popular.
>There are plenty of existing general-purpose computer languages. But their vision is very different—and in a sense much more modest—than the Wolfram Language.
Sounds very promising, Wolfram seems to be on the right track here, pricing might be an issue but I am looking forward to the "language" like the instant cloud deployment.
There is more happening with R, D3 / Javascript info vis, and the iPython/Notebook stack around data science than Wolfram as a singular corporation can possibly keep up with. In a recent version R was embraced and extended, is this another step with those same sorts of strategies?
The value of these Open Source communities go way beyond the core language and arise out of the structure.
This will go the way of Linux/BSD (only Microsoft could justify rolling forward alone with its own OS kernel).
I love hearing Wolfram give talks (I went to his Elements intro at the SF Maker's Fair, right after the iPad came out), and his blog posts; I get sucked in, thinking--- this genius, he thinks of everything!
Then I try to find the "Redo" button in Mathematica and I reconsider.
Unless I misunderstand what you mean by 'term rewriting', fexpr based lisps are similar - everything is a rewrite on the program tree, but 'normal' functions evaluate their arguments before doing things with them, and compile time macros (not reader macros) are effectively a first pass over that tree where any symbol not already bound to a macro is treated as the identity function.
The kernel language and associated $vau calculus go into this more, and I've experimented with it somewhat myself having ported Manuel's wat-js to perl.
[+] [-] archgrove|12 years ago|reply
Oh, and if Mathematica is the basis of the "Wolfram language", and this is the universal computing language of our new "interconnected brain", I'm leaving for another universe. Unless the boy who cried wolf really has cornered one this time.
[+] [-] ronaldx|12 years ago|reply
Wolfram Alpha was massively over-hyped and billed as a Google-killer. It is not remotely that, but it's still an incredibly useful and inimitable product.
[+] [-] yannis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cicatriz|12 years ago|reply
Because it's in natural language? WolframAlpha demonstrates (unsurprisingly) that it's still finicky. You still have to do just as much work to ensure connected services are working together properly.
Because--according to universal computation--it covers the entire computable world? So does any Turing-complete language.
I do see this as another cool thing along the lines of IPython Notebooks or JS Fiddle where you can quickly hook up to services and share the results. Uniquely, WolframAlpha's datasets and some of Mathematica's features. So it'd be nice for homework sets or Bret Victor-esque reactive documents (see http://worrydream.com/Tangle/).
[+] [-] nnethercote|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spitfire|12 years ago|reply
But, if you've used mathematica it is the closest thing we have right now to the star trek computer. In a single line I can get solutions to complex problems that would take days in Ruby, Lisp or Haskell. It is the same distance again as Lisp is from C.
In fact, many of the failures you see write-ups on HN I've been able to model and solve in a few minutes with MMA. In particular the rap genius Heroku queue issue.
[+] [-] tfb|12 years ago|reply
In fact, many of the failures you see write-ups on HN I've been able to model and solve in a few minutes with MMA. In particular the rap genius Heroku queue issue.
Can you elaborate and/or provide a thorough example of this? I'm curious.
[+] [-] mathattack|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zackmorris|12 years ago|reply
However, Mathematica has always felt a bit niche to me. I wish it was more of an open source project like Octave, because I think the approach is awesome but too often I feel constrained by Wolfram's way of looking at things. If I could combine Matlab, Go, Python, Mathematica, Excel and (yikes) php for it's hands-on-get-@#!$-done-facility, that would be my ideal language.
[+] [-] gmisra|12 years ago|reply
http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfra...
[+] [-] taliesinb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsaul|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pertinhower|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avn2109|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whazor|12 years ago|reply
You can do awesome stuff with their mathematical based tools. There are tools for statistics, conversions between units, calculation with dates & times, and a lot more. Look for yourself at http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/
Now, they also have the data. Like weather data, about media(movies/music), about languages, about media, about stock and also a lot more.
But for developers there is a problem, you can't build apps with their platform. For example you can't really store or receive data, and there are more practical problems.
So I think that they already solved the practical problems. Because they are developing software themselves this way. So for making it friendly for developers they only have to build some frontend for it.
[+] [-] csmuk|12 years ago|reply
Excuse the sarcasm but Mathematica is unjustifiably expensive to be general purpose and ubiquitous and I'm sure any derivative or superior tool will be as well.
[+] [-] pertinhower|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] undoware|12 years ago|reply
How¸ you ask? Well, I'll just Alpha that for you...
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bsaul|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taliesinb|12 years ago|reply
Here's a very high-level and eclectic list of themes and specific research directions I can remember off-hand: agent-based modeling in economics and operational research, game theory automata in evolutionary biology, lattice gas methods in fluid dynamics, tessellation-based approaches to solving PDAs, L-systems in architectural design, logic automata for programming array-based computers, cellular automata-based PRNGs for stream ciphers, program search for finding lock-free concurrent algorithms, rBMs as used in deep learning.
In fact, I used an exhaustive NKS-style search the other day to find novel data query primitives (i.e. what other functions live in the type-signature space that MapReduce occupies?).
[+] [-] joeld42|12 years ago|reply
Also, I think the key insight is pretty deep -- systems are either trivially simple, or limitlessly complex, once you reach a (very low) level of complexity, you can do pretty much anything.
[+] [-] xradionut|12 years ago|reply
As for his post, it should have been titled: "A New Kind of Programming Language".
[+] [-] mathattack|12 years ago|reply
It seems like he has an awful lot of balls in the air, which might mean long intellectual leaps, but not the legwork behind them.
[+] [-] ffk|12 years ago|reply
Wolfram has a large following in the academic world and improvements to his product line can turn into real results.
[+] [-] gh02t|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lignuist|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jere|12 years ago|reply
Indeed.
[+] [-] yonks|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phelmig|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheMagicHorsey|12 years ago|reply
One time I knocked my head and blurted out all my ideas without any demos too.
[+] [-] yannis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thadk|12 years ago|reply
The value of these Open Source communities go way beyond the core language and arise out of the structure.
This will go the way of Linux/BSD (only Microsoft could justify rolling forward alone with its own OS kernel).
[+] [-] mlangdon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chbrown|12 years ago|reply
Then I try to find the "Redo" button in Mathematica and I reconsider.
[+] [-] lispm|12 years ago|reply
a) the Mathematica language has an extensive user manual, but the specification of the language is missing.
b) Mathematica uses term rewriting. Lisp is based on an evaluation model, with procedural macros added.
[+] [-] mst|12 years ago|reply
The kernel language and associated $vau calculus go into this more, and I've experimented with it somewhat myself having ported Manuel's wat-js to perl.