

Stephen Wolfram: Something Very Big Is Coming - rawfael
http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2013/11/13/something-very-big-is-coming-our-most-important-technology-project-yet/

======
mck-
> In most languages there’s a sharp distinction between programs, and data,
> and the output of programs. Not so in the Wolfram Language. It’s all
> completely fluid. Data becomes algorithmic. Algorithms become data. There’s
> no distinction needed between code and data. And everything becomes both
> intrinsically scriptable, and intrinsically interactive. And there’s both a
> new level of interoperability, and a new level of modularity.

Sounds like Lisp :p

~~~
taliesinb
It's a little beyond that, in some ways. In the LISPs, you can view programs
as data, but macros are different from, say, 'if'. The Read and Evaluate parts
of the REPL are distinct phases.

Whereas in Wolfram Language, If is just an ordinary symbol that has attribute
HoldRest to ensure that it can prevent evaluation of its two clauses until it
knows which one to evaluate.

In other words, code is just data (expression) that happens to have specific
rules that will cause it to evaluate in some way, yielding a new expression
(which could be more code, or partially evaluated code, or data, or whatever).

But you can also have rules attached to several symbols _together_. So for
example, when you see a Foo containing a Bar, replace it with a Baz:

    
    
       Foo[___, Bar, ___] := Baz;
    

It's a little like multiple dispatch, but it is slightly more general than
even that. And totally pattern based (the pattern language is ridiculously
rich).

There's one more twist, which is that everything is not just serializable, but
in some sense it _is_ its serialization (called FullForm). It's hard to
explain what this means without playing around with stuff.

Also, the language has actual m-expressions, thank god, unlike most LISPs.

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th0ma5
Sounds to me a little like the Semantic Web and something like Heroku together
as a cohesive system. Sounds okay!

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scardine
I may loose some karma here, but I could not decide if the post is pure genius
or something written during the maniac phase of a bipolar disorder.

~~~
lhnz
Often there's no difference.

------
nickmain
Existing discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6726070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6726070)

------
james33
If you don't have time to read all of the way through, the "coming soon"
portion is ready to take your e-mail at
[http://www.wolframcloud.com](http://www.wolframcloud.com).

~~~
rohitv
So is Wolfram Language: [http://www.wolfram.com/wolfram-
language/](http://www.wolfram.com/wolfram-language/)

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agos
Reminds me of Brett Victor's “The future of programming”
([http://vimeo.com/71278954](http://vimeo.com/71278954)), “Learnable
Programming”
([http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/](http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/))
and “Inventing on principle”
([http://vimeo.com/36579366](http://vimeo.com/36579366))

~~~
kineticfocus
Reminds me of Wolfram's earlier book...
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science)

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headgasket
One thing is for sure; clouds are gathering.

~~~
happycube
Winter is coming.

(... at least in the Northern Hemisphere)

------
Zarathust
I remember wolfram alpha being marketed pre-release as something that would
make Google obsolete. The only reason I ever use this is for math when I do
not have access to a native alternative such as matlab. Considering that I use
less math than I used to, I wonder why it is still relevant.

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mprat
Is the language Mathematica and Wolfram | Alpha now use not called the Wolfram
Language?

~~~
quchen
The Mathematica language is usually simply referred to as "Mathematica", at
least from what I can tell from my experience on
mathematica.stackoverflow.com. Probably because the only frontend that allows
doing actual work is the Mathematica software (excluding development of own
modules).

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Anon84
A New New Kind of Science?

~~~
bsdetector
Sounds like an amped up Wolfram Alpha so more like...

A New Science Of Kinds.

~~~
Anon84
Maybe Wolfram Alpha will receive a bunch of bug fixes and finally move up to
Beta version?

</joke>

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tmikaeld
It sounds VERY locked to the Wolfram cloud platform and NOT very open sourced…
Just makes me think about Oracle type of lock-ins immediately :P

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mVChr
Does "embeddable programs everywhere" [paraphrase] sound like a maintenance
nightmare to anyone else?

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Vektorweg
Prolog 2.0 , big database included!

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bfwork
Mathematica finally gets undo?

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nfoz
Oh yeah? Is it a new Segway?

~~~
throwaway1979
That was the biggest "product release" disappointment I've had in my life. I
was a naive kid ... huge fan of Kamen (actually, I still am a big fan of the
man). IT was going to change everything!!! Bezos and a bunch of other big wigs
are investing in it!!! I grew up a bit after that ...

~~~
happycube
If only they had followed Amazon's business model (screw the margins, and
scale up as fast as possible) it might actually have taken off...

~~~
throwaway1979
I didn't have as big of an issue with the business model than I had with the
product itself. Seriously ... what happens when it rains? How do you navigate
pedestrian-dense sidewalks? I'm not George W. but I have managed to crash one.

~~~
protomyth
GWB wasn't told the important tip of turning the damn thing on which, for a
demo, told me the company had no marketing sense. If you get POTUS with your
product, you nail the damn demo or just close the company. GWB is a pretty
athletic guy and they couldn't get the demo right.

It goes with the Tonight Show appearance that is probably the single best
sales pitch except for the Segway rep trying to play nanny with Jay Leno,
Russell Crowe, and Sting with Russell Crowe promoting Gladiator and yelling
lines from the movie.

