
The Story of Spikey (2018) - bookofjoe
https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2018/12/the-story-of-spikey/
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idlewords
What's with the surge of Wolfram stories on Hacker News lately?

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new4thaccount
Great question. I've posted several over the years and most never make it to
the front page.

There are some physics, engineering, and math types on HN that can really use
the functionality of Mathematica (and it is awesome), but the usual crowd here
is more on the software engineering side (building systems and not simulations
with differential equations and such) abd thus not as excited about Mathmatica
related posts. Yes, I use Python/Numpy/Sage and Julia too, but they have a
ways to go.

Recently Wolfram made some strides by making free some of their stack
(arguably the less important parts) albeit with a crazy license. That caused a
lot of discussion as to why they did it and how useful it was. This was of
interest to this crowd (the people who would maybe use the software
engineering part of their stack).

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kgwgk
> making free some of their stack (arguably the less important parts)

How is the core of their product the less important part?

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new4thaccount
Because Mathematica is the part that actually solves equations and does file
parsing, genetic algorithms, 3D visualizations, blockchain...etc.

It looks like you still need an expensive and closed source Mathematica
license to go with the engine part.

That is why there was so much discussion...most HN commenters we're trying to
figure out what Stephen's announcement actually meant. The fine print also
gives them the right to audit your use and you have to respond with what they
need in 10 days, so I'm not sure how many people would want to deal with that
if they don't have to.

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kgwgk
I'm not sure you understand the power of the engine.

I can run the following in a jupyter notebook

    
    
      image = CurrentImage[]
      faces = FindFaces[image]
      Show[{image, 
        Graphics[{EdgeForm[{Red, Thick}], FaceForm[], 
          Rectangle @@@ faces}]}]
    

and it will take a photo using the computer's camera and draw a box around my
face.

Executing

    
    
      DSolve[{y'[x] == y[x], y[0] == 1}, y[x], x]
    

returns

    
    
      y[x] -> e^x
    

Edit: The following demos also work:

[https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-10/enhanced-
graph...](https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-10/enhanced-graphs-and-
networks/maze-generator.html)

[https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/new-
in-10/enhanced-3d-im...](https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/new-
in-10/enhanced-3d-image-processing/corners-in-3d.html)

[https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-10/symbolic-
geome...](https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-10/symbolic-
geometry/compute-nearest-points.html)

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new4thaccount
I don't think many of us on the main thread earlier this week did. Please
explain why they still sell expensive Mathematica licenses if it is all now
free (note that I'm not saying it isn't worth it). What are we missing?

Regardless, thanks for correcting my error!

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kgwgk
Because of the "crazy" license (I would say it's quite reasonable, essentially
it disallows using it for anything else than development or in the context of
non-commercial personal projects), the user interface [1], the support... I
don't use Mathematica myself, I don't know what functionality is missing.

[1] the free wolfram engine is a command line (or API) application and the
Jupyter interface is much more primitive than the real thing:
[https://github.com/WolframResearch/WolframLanguageForJupyter](https://github.com/WolframResearch/WolframLanguageForJupyter)

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new4thaccount
I would guess that over half of their current customers use Mathematica for
development and prototyping (but don't put anything into production). This
would effectively mean that they would let go of ~50% of their revenue over
night (we're this to be true). So that line of thought is why I'm so confused.
Does that make sense?

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i_don_t_know
My impression was that they did it to gain new customers. People who didn't
use it because they could only use it for prototyping but up to now weren't
able to directly use their solution in production. Where production includes
internal not-customer-facing tools, for example a custom UI or webpage for
engineers or financial analysts where the backend calls into Mathematica as
opposed to for example Python and its math libraries.

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kgwgk
> up to now weren't able to directly use their solution in production.

That’s exactly what you __cannot__ do with their new “free wolfram engine for
developers” license.

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i_don_t_know
Thanks for pointing that out!

I hadn't followed the original discussion. I mistook the new license for a
simplified runtime/production license. Looking at the announcement and the
licensing terms again, I don't understand the benefit. At least, I don't feel
more inclined to give it a try than I was before. (It's a great product but I
still wouldn't base a project on it.)

