I’ve always liked the idea of using Wolfram / Mathematica for exploratory work (mainly statistics and data science) and found it to be too academic for my taste. Not as simple as using say, pandas, where I can rely on editor autocomplete to help me figure out what I need. It’s a result of their functional design choice but it forces the user to know what they need. I have poor working memory and “let’s figure it out as we do it” works best for me. Wolfram lang is not good fit for that IMO.
AI models are getting close to delivering on the advantage it holds - like solid visualizations and good mathematics to programming translatability. In fact, I think their “engine” with a multi-modal AI input + MCP, would be the best of both worlds and may help push their adoption. Or perhaps even a copilot type experience in their IDE. When I look at their site now, it looks practically unchanged from 5 years ago - so I’m a little taken aback given Dr. Wolfram’s initial enthusiasm around LLMs, seeing a lack of any significant AI feature adoption.
sheepscreek•2mo ago
I’ve always liked the idea of using Wolfram / Mathematica for exploratory work (mainly statistics and data science) and found it to be too academic for my taste. Not as simple as using say, pandas, where I can rely on editor autocomplete to help me figure out what I need. It’s a result of their functional design choice but it forces the user to know what they need. I have poor working memory and “let’s figure it out as we do it” works best for me. Wolfram lang is not good fit for that IMO.
AI models are getting close to delivering on the advantage it holds - like solid visualizations and good mathematics to programming translatability. In fact, I think their “engine” with a multi-modal AI input + MCP, would be the best of both worlds and may help push their adoption. Or perhaps even a copilot type experience in their IDE. When I look at their site now, it looks practically unchanged from 5 years ago - so I’m a little taken aback given Dr. Wolfram’s initial enthusiasm around LLMs, seeing a lack of any significant AI feature adoption.