

Mathematica 7.0 Released Today - pg
http://blog.wolfram.com/2008/11/18/surprise-mathematica-70-released-today/

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nswanberg
Those of you interested in Silicon Valley trivia might note that the name
Mathematica was suggested by someone named Steven Jobs:
[http://reference.wolfram.com/legacy/v1/contents/acknowledgme...](http://reference.wolfram.com/legacy/v1/contents/acknowledgments.pdf)

The name is a little misleading though, as the later releases have shown
Mathematica to be a great general symbolic manipulation program not just for,
say, Calculus homework, but Wolfram had already used the name SMP, and the
other options just didn't seem as catchy:
[http://www.stephenwolfram.com/scrapbook/internals/page5/3.ht...](http://www.stephenwolfram.com/scrapbook/internals/page5/3.html)

~~~
Create
I always believed, that it was a shameless borrowing (as do "great artist") of
Macsyma -- living on free as Maxima.

Octave, Scilab and python driven C++ (e.g. Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra
Software, ATLAS) can do just as good, if not the same or better. If you know
what you are doing (which would be a must, anyway).

ps: Steven's book is full of spin, so I guess some of them would also make it
to his website and vice-versa: this is called marketing and propaganda...

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delackner
While I will probably never use mathematica, due to its breathtaking price,
one can only wonder how many researchers the world over simply pirate it. I
also doubt we will ever see Wolfram willing to set the price at a level that
normal human beings can afford.

Perhaps a client-server version that does all its computing back at Wolfram's
servers, would give them the confidence to dabble with a sane price point...

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newt0311
researchers work in universities, almost all of which have site-wide licenses.
Site-wide licenses for mathematica also start to approach reason. Its doubtful
that that many researchers will have to pirate it.

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delackner
Universities in a lot of countries do not have budgets that can deal with even
$1000 a seat.

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dzorz
I can confirm this. We have a site-wide license for Matlab, but not for
Mathematica. Educational version of Mathematica 7 would cost me my two monthly
salaries - therefore I will pirate it.

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listic
I didn't buy any, but from my point of view, Mathematica is priced just a bit
lower than Matlab.

Matlab quotes me $1900 for a single common license:
<http://www.mathworks.com/store/loginSubmitGuest.do> while Mathematica is
$1750: <http://store.wolfram.com/view/app/mathematica/>

How much does site license for Matlab cost you?

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PStamatiou
I got Matlab student version 4 years ago for around $140.

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etal
Sweet Jesus. The image-processing capability is pretty hot, as is this:

    
    
        ProteinData["A2M", "MoleculePlot"]
    

It's a shame Mathematica isn't open-source; I'd love to see the code.

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syntax-case
Why? Do you think there's something special about displaying molecules? Or do
you think Mathematica does it better than anything else?

Try PyMOL - the most widely used molecular graphics software, probably.

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etal
Yes, I use PyMol quite a bit. The source code is hideous, and the author likes
it that way. It would take an immense effort to smoothly incorporate PyMol
into a larger system like SciPy or Sage; it would be very useful if that
happened, but I don't think it will any time soon.

I haven't used Mathematica 7 yet, but it looks like the tools it implements in
one small library are decent substitutes for what's currently implemented in
several big hairy bioinformatics toolchains. Look at how we operate now --
NCBI offers a bunch of free standalone tools; BioPerl and BioPython do some
good glue, and then there are a bunch of visualization tools, and we FTP
copies of whatever databases we need and keep updated manually. The extensible
tools each have their own extension language, so a RasMol script won't load in
PyMol (the tweaks, not the PDB file). Mathematica 7 appears to offer the basic
components of this in one clean, well-organized standard library, controlled
by one powerful language.

All that's great, but the especially interesting thing is their claim that the
design of the whole system made all of this _easy_. The image-processing
tricks and the unassuming Parallelize function seem like very specialized
features, but they cobbled all of this together in, I guess, 2 years and some
change, on top of a codebase that's almost 20 years old. It's like the anti-
PHP -- brilliant design decisions all along that make adding new features
easier, not harder. I have a feeling the Mathematica source code contains some
very interesting ideas, and if it were open-source, it would be relatively
easy to add additional features that seem like a big deal in existing tools.

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syntax-case
I haven't used Mathematica 9.0 and its chemistry-related functions, but from
the presentations, they look like practically useless toys for dabbles.

Can Mathematica do raytracing, display secondary structure, semi-transparent
molecular surface and allow you to select coloring patterns? Is it easy to
predict protonation states of molecules at different pH levels and
electrostatic potentials? Can it do molecular dynamics?

Who cares that they have built-in access to the melting point of caffeine?!

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DaniFong
Some of this stuff is jaw droppingly awesome. But I have to say, the most
useful things for me will be the discrete calculus, the new visualizations,
and the enhanced typesetting and UI. Many of the new mathematical additions
are very interesting but very specific.

I am very happy that Mathematica 7 ships with so much _data_. Data processing
and procurement is a perpetual burden for those in chemistry, life science and
environmental science. I'll be glad if this tax has somewhat lifted it.

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mattjaynes
If you missed Wolfram's talk at Startup School you can get it at (along with
the other talks):

<http://feeds.feedburner.com/Ycombinator-StartupSchool>

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nswanberg
Unfortunately, the link to the Wolfram talk on Feedburner isn't working.
Here's a link to the transcript of the talk (the mp3 is also available for
iPod-achievers by going to the talk index):
[http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/talks/ycombinator...](http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/talks/ycombinatorschool/)

The talk is worth a read, but he doesn't give out any secrets to success
("work hard"), and note that the title of the talk is "On Starting a Long Term
Company." It seems aimed at solving the problem of "How can I get the people,
software, and money for my research?" rather than the problem of "How can I
afford that ocean-front mansion and retire at 30?"

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vizard
Mathematica is nice but I dont like their licensing policies. Had a huge fight
with them once after I had to reinstall my OS :(

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Alex3917
So when do we get the version he talked about at Startup School that can find
a unifying theory of physics by running cellular automata with randomly
generated start conditions?

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DaniFong
In 10^10^(big number) years? :-)

~~~
Alex3917
It's funny to think that the singularity, if it is coming, will produce this
profound qualitative shift in human existence. And at the same time mean
absolutely nothing in the face of a problem such as this.

~~~
DaniFong
_shrugs_

I have the feeling that if anything like the 'singularity' happens, it will
feel fairly normal to the participants. There are many things today that would
seem completely 'sci-fi' to people even a few decades ago. But we're still
going to be resource and physics constrained, unless society changes our
conscious enough that memes and genes won't still end up in an endless hunt
for exponential growth.

~~~
JesseAldridge
Genes? Where we're going there are no genes.

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aswanson
pg, any chance of negotiating a news.yc member discount?

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llimllib
It truly, truly sucks that Mathematica would cost me nearly a month of pay.
I'd love to have it and use it, but that is just far too much.

~~~
kqr2
Maybe you can try sage:

<http://wiki.sagemath.org/sage_mathematica>

~~~
llimllib
I love all the components that sage is built on, and am a huge python nerd,
though I haven't tried sage itself.

Mathematica just does some super cool things and encourages a different
pattern of thought, which I'd love to play with.

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anatyx
I just a attended a free webinar about using Mathematica for education
(<http://www.wolfram.com/services/education/seminars/s01.html>) and the guy
who was chatting with all of the attendees told me my college already had a
site license. Turns out I can use Mathematica at school and at home for free
and I had no idea...

You might want to check if your campus has something similar set up. The
Mathematica folks might be able to direct you to the right place.

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schtog
How is the programming language in Mathematica?

How is it for Matlab stuff? Or perhaps it isn't for linear algebra at all?

Can you write real standalone applications in Mathematica or it is solely for
prototyping, analyizng and modeling?

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maximilian
The upgrade for students is $75 (if you have 6). I don't think i'm gonna jump.
Doesn't really seem worth it? I never use the advanced features as is. All i
ever do is basic algebraic manipulations and screwy integrals.

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DanielBMarkham
For $2500 it had better come as a brain implant

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syntax-case
Mathematica's bugginess (on SGI) is what prompted me to learn "real"
programming languages some years ago.

