
Celebrating Mathematica’s First Quarter Century - lispython
http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/06/celebrating-mathematicas-first-quarter-century/
======
tmoertel
I was one of the first users of Mathematica and recently received a thank-you
note from Wolfram Research for my early support. Unlike many early supporters
and enthusiasts of Mathematica, however, I won't be encouraging others to join
the Mathematica bandwagon.

I myself stopped using the software about a decade ago for one simple, painful
reason: I don't want my work to be trapped inside of a system that prevents
others from freely building upon it. (And, no, Wolfram's CDF and "player"
software are not substitutes for real, live code that I can give to others and
have them use, change, and build upon -- without having to license a
proprietary software system.)

As I've written before, Mathematica is one of the world's great works of
software, mathematics, and engineering. But, as I've also written before, it
can't achieve but the smallest portion of its potential to do good for
humankind until _all_ humans can use it. For real.

If Google wanted to do the world a _big_ favor, gain itself some serious PR
points, and perhaps increase its supply of potential math-savvy engineers two
decades hence, it ought to buy Wolfram Research, continue to fund WR's work,
and release Mathematica as free software backed by an open development
process. Maybe this feat is too big for Google to pull off. Maybe it would
take a consortium -- Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and IBM
together -- but maybe it could happen.

And, if it did, that would be a great day for humankind.

~~~
pdog
_> If Google wanted to do the world a big favor, gain itself some serious PR
points, and perhaps increase its supply of potential math-savvy engineers two
decades hence, it ought to buy Wolfram Research, continue to fund WR's work,
and release Mathematica as free software backed by an open development
process. Maybe this feat is too big for Google to pull off. Maybe it would
take a consortium -- Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and IBM
together -- but maybe it could happen._

What? Why not develop a Mathematica alternative?

~~~
tmoertel
That's an option. But it would probably set the world back a decade, maybe
two, compared to freeing Mathematica. Even if your Mathematica replacement
were ready today, it would take years and years and years to gain enough
mindshare to begin overtaking Mathematica. The benefit of freeing Mathematica,
then, is that it's _already_ dominant. No need to wait out the ever-so-slow
shifting of mindshare.

------
daturkel
I can't stand to read Wolfram's ego-stroking for more than a few paragraphs.
The guy is very into how great he and his software are.

~~~
michaelwww
I tried to look beyond that because it seems like a personality disorder he
has little control over, but after spending some time on the site I still
don't have a good idea of what Mathematica is or why I would want to use it.
It seems to be all things to all people. If it's a computer language, then you
could say that about any computer language. Mathematica seems to be a computer
language with an IDE that provides a multitude of components (25 yrs worth.)
It's even got a web dev component, but I couldn't figure out what benefits it
brings.

~~~
jfarmer
It's a programming language and an associated IDE for doing mathematical and
scientific computing. It is similar to Matlab in some ways, although Matlab
has a strong "numerical" flavor and Mathematica has a strong "symbolic"
flavor.

As a language it use an M-expression-like syntax. See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-expression](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-expression)

~~~
mjn
I believe its IDE was also the first widely used one to take the "mathematical
notebook" approach where you can sort of free-form arrange formulas on a page
and link them to each other. Unless I'm mistaken, at the time the other
computer-algebra systems (Macsyma, Maple, etc.) all used REPL style sequential
interfaces. I mostly prefer the REPL interfaces myself, but a lot of people
like the notebook style, and I think Mathematica's approach to that has been
influential on some recent open-source interfaces like Sage Notebook and
iPython Notebook.

~~~
whyenot
MathCAD[1] was the first to use the notebook approach. It was/is a neat
application, more along the lines of Matlab than a CAS like Mathematica.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathcad](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathcad)

------
cschmidt
This really does make me feel old. I started using Mathematica 1.1 in my
freshman year in college, 24 years ago. I still use it fairly frequently
today. I didn't realize I was an early adopter :-).

~~~
taliesinb
Your comment makes _me_ feel really _young_! I'm younger than Wolfram Research
but older than Mathematica.

Having just attended our 25 anniversary celebration in Illinois, it's clear
there is an enthusiastic and long-lived community around Mathematica that is
only going to grow.

With any luck, 2014 will be a "breakout" year in which the Wolfram Language
that underlies Mathematica will start playing a more mainstream role in the
software engineering industry.

------
galapago
If he thinks it is so important for humanity, he should consider to open
source it..

~~~
scrumper
Perhaps he will, one day, but for now the large staff he has working for him
all depend on sales of Mathematica to feed their families.

Curating the data sets behind Wolfram Alpha (and Mathematica) is a hugely
labour-intensive endeavour. Mathematica itself depends on a large team of
extremely well educated people; the pan-scientific domain expertise is
significant in that company. Jeopardising that with a radical change of
business model, like open sourcing Mathematica, would not be the choice of a
sane businessman.

~~~
maaku
IMHO Wolfram would benefit from open-sourcing Mathematica, and continuing to
license Wolfram Alpha (possibly through a 'Pro' version of Mathematica with
unmetered Wolfram Alpha API integration).

