
Wolfram Language Introduction for Programmers - ColinWright
http://www.wolfram.com/language/fast-introduction-for-programmers/interactive-usage/
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alkonaut
Is there an outline somewhere of the differences between ordinary Mathematica
syntax and "Wolfram Language"? I was a bit disappointed when I first
discovered that it seemed so only resemble Mathematica, which is excellent for
REPL style programming but pretty hopeless for large scale structured
programming, much like Matlab.

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fbuilesv
Mathematica, Cloud and Alpha are three examples of products that use this
language (not exclusively but extensively). I would qualify these as large
scale products.

I've been testing Cloud since April, and although I don't think the
environment is ready for production yet, the problems are more related to the
UI and the backend than to the actual language and libraries.

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tempodox
What's the point of showing that here? You have to pay through your nose for
Mathematica or so to make any use of it.

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pmarin
You have to pay for a Mac to use Swift and nobody complained.

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tempodox
Point taken :-)

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gglon
finally available for everyone:
[https://programming.wolframcloud.com/app/](https://programming.wolframcloud.com/app/)

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nkuttler
Content hidden behind a login. Care to elaborate?

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m_ram
[http://www.wolfram.com/programming-cloud](http://www.wolfram.com/programming-
cloud)

I think the relevant part is "Start coding and deploying now–for free."
Whereas before you had to spend at least a few hundred dollars on Mathematica.

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billydafish
Opening up access to the wolfram language will let more science be possible
using Mathematica and remain reproducible by non-Mathematica users. Must be a
good thing.

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hdevalence
Why is it a good thing to let more science be possible using Mathematica?

The issue with Mathematica for science isn't that it's expensive, it's that
it's proprietary and secret.

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jevinskie
Because it better enables people to produce results. Those results can be
verified outside of Mathematica.

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narwally
Kind of confusing how they call anonymous functions "pure functions". Having
function literals is great, but calling them pure functions is going to be
frustrating for anyone coming from a background in FP.

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pfraze
This is the first time I've seen the symbolic manipulation explained. It's
kind of like pattern-matching taken up to 11. Can anybody give some practical
examples? For instance, the docs mention here that it's used in lieu of a
types system.

~~~
chisophugis
Here's a couple elementary examples that are useful:

f[x_Integer]:=x^2

Basically the pattern for the argument of f must match the pattern _Integer,
which means that the argument is an integer. If the pattern does not match,
then it stays in an unevaluated form; you could have it throw an error by
having an extra pattern f[_]:=Assert[False] or whatever.

f[x_] /; x>2 := x^2

Same, but in this case only if x>2.

Basic symbolic manipulation:

Sin[x^2 + x + 2] /. x->3

Evaluate at x=3.

θ^2/r /. {r -> Sqrt[x^2 + y^2], θ -> ArcTan[x, y]}                

Convert from polar coordinates to Cartesian.

General programming:

In[21]:= Cases[{1,2,3,4}, x_ /; x>2 && PrimeQ[x] -> x^2] Out[21]= {9} 

Kind of like a list comprehension.

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jedisct1
What is the difference between Wolfram Desktop and Mathematica?

