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...open-source when? There's basically zero widely used programming languages that are not open-source, get to grips with this ffs. Esp. since Wolfram strives

...open-source when? There's basically zero widely used programming languages that are not open-source, get to grips with this ffs. Esp. since Wolfram strives to be somewhat-general-purpose in a way (it's not smth like eg. K who's niche anyway) and having an open-source version is crucial in this segment. Hire some ppl (sales, mgmt, product etc.) who know how to make money from open-source (get some from RedHat, IBM etc.) and make this technology accessible to not have all this effort practically wasted, eg. I'd love to use Wolfram instead of Python, but non-opensource is just a no-go for any foundational technology (language, framework, server).

pjmlp 4y ago
That is why some enjoy state of the art JIT/AOT compilers and GC implementations, whereas others make do with what they have.
kgwgk 4y ago
> all this effort practically wasted Wasted as in providing a continuously improved product to the thousands of paying customers that fund this effort?
- bborud 4y ago
  Wasted as in not fulfilling its potential even a little bit. Mathematica is a very niche product. It isn't even very relevant in academia or in engineering. But it could have been if Wolfram hadn't hobbled it with unproductive restrictions. It could have had an audience of millions, and that audience would have brought it more value than a single company is capable of creating through a community. Just look at Python. It is just a language. And a not particularly good one at that. ALL of its value comes from the community. Compared to Python, Mathematica isn't even a rounding error in terms of value created. Imagine if Mathematica had been at the core of the last 15 years of data science, machine learning and whatnot? Imagine if the work and the value that went into the Python ecosystem had instead gone into Mathematica. Imagine if even just one of the many things Mathematica can potentially do well had become the go-to way for doing things. But it didn't. Because Mathematica is fundamentally incompatible with the way communities work.
  - kgwgk 4y ago
    Just look at Python indeed. As you say it's a much worse language than many others that were equally available to anyone. And yet somehow it's at the the core of the last 15 years of data science, machine learning and whatnot. If Mathematica had been open-sourced twenty years ago it wouldn't have taken the place of Python. It probably would be even more niche today - and worse.
    - bborud 4y ago
      Python ended up at the core of data science because it was capable of serving a community. A community that produced comprehensive computational libraries, which, combined with the low threshold for getting started, made it more accessible for an audience that is interested in computation first and programming second. This is largely the same audience as for tools like Matlab and Mathematica. And to serve that market it didn't have to be a good programming language. You won't find most data scientists discussing the finer points of functional programming or OO. They'll be discussing what mathematical techniques to use or what stages to string together in order to achieve the computation they want. If you have ever worked with typical data scientists, most of them aren't even half way competent software engineers. What Python shows is that community beats technical excellence. By orders of magnitude. Whether or not Mathematica is a better language is irrelevant as it doesn't have the properties required a large community contributing value for free. We can't know if Mathematica could have taken the place of Python if it was open sourced, because it wasn't open sourced. But it given that it had a more potent programming model, it could have led to a very different path from model to running software, for instance. And it could have made distributed computation arrive a lot earlier. But it is actually quite a bit more challenging for Mathematica than that since its licensing terms are stricter than products you might compare it to, like Matlab. I don't think Mathematica would even have to be open sourced to be more successful - it would just have to be a less unattractive value proposition. Compare the revenue of Mathworks vs Wolfram Research, for instance. And then take into account that Mathematica has a much more potent programming model that could have far wider applicability than Matlab. And keep in mind: Matlab doesn't even have a programming model as potent as Mathematica. I think that the smartest thing Wolfram could have done would have been to open source the language, the runtime, and a reasonable standard library. Then they could have built a business on top of that of reasonably priced interactive software with GUIs, visualization tools, developer tools to make stand-alone applications, server applications for distributed computation and a SaaS solution for customers who want to run computation in the cloud. And it isn't like Mathworks didn't miss the boat too. But they are still an order of magnitude more successful than Wolfram Research. Which still makes Wolfram Research the slowest kid in the class in terms of unrealized potential.
tableofzero 4y ago
By far the most popular programming language in the world is propriatary -- Excel.
- catchclose8919 4y ago
  There's many open-source alternatives to Excel. Rarely used, but it settles any fear of lock in. This also made the area palatable for other commercial competitors to enter the space - Google-sheets drive A TON of enterprise org work nowadays. You could say that open-source alternatives immensely popularized spreadsheets and resulted in the very nice ecosystem we have now. Sure, heave finance user stick to MS Excell because MS is pressured to cater very well to their needs, else they will move away to other free or paid alternatives. Also, there's a reason why multi-dimensional spreadheets are not more popular despite solving so many problems of regular spreadheets: all are proprietary and very different one from another - you probably pick smth like Quantrix (https://quantrix.com/products/quantrix-modeler/ https://quantrix.com/products/quantrix-modeler/), and you'd get insane prices and 100% lock-in... better stick to Excell and/or its open-source and/or free alternatives despite being a worse tool :)
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Since when is Google sheets not proprietary?
- capableweb 4y ago
  Excel is built with programming language and can certainly be used as one, but that doesn't mean it is one. It's also a bit anal to classify Excel as a programming language, most people would say spreadsheets are a tool, where you could write programs, but again, doesn't mean it's a programming language. At most, I'd give you that Excel is a tool that can do "visual programming", but that's far of from being a "programming language".
  - zaphar 4y ago
    This is unfair and a far too narrow definition of programming language. Excel sits very squarely in the functional reactive language space. Just because most of it's users don't "know" they are programming and most of our common tools don't work with it doesn't change the fact that it has pretty much all of the building blocks that any programming language gives you. Are there domains where Excel is awkward to use? Absolutely. The same can be said about pretty much any programming language. Excel deserves to have the label of programming language even if it shuns that label due to it's target audience.
chobytes 4y ago
I can assure you its widely used by certain fields in academia. Im currently a research assistant in physics at a large lab, and mathematica is ubiquitous.

pjmlp 4y ago

That is why some enjoy state of the art JIT/AOT compilers and GC implementations, whereas others make do with what they have.

kgwgk 4y ago

> all this effort practically wasted Wasted as in providing a continuously improved product to the thousands of paying customers that fund this effort?

bborud 4y ago
Wasted as in not fulfilling its potential even a little bit. Mathematica is a very niche product. It isn't even very relevant in academia or in engineering. But it could have been if Wolfram hadn't hobbled it with unproductive restrictions. It could have had an audience of millions, and that audience would have brought it more value than a single company is capable of creating through a community. Just look at Python. It is just a language. And a not particularly good one at that. ALL of its value comes from the community. Compared to Python, Mathematica isn't even a rounding error in terms of value created. Imagine if Mathematica had been at the core of the last 15 years of data science, machine learning and whatnot? Imagine if the work and the value that went into the Python ecosystem had instead gone into Mathematica. Imagine if even just one of the many things Mathematica can potentially do well had become the go-to way for doing things. But it didn't. Because Mathematica is fundamentally incompatible with the way communities work.
- kgwgk 4y ago
  Just look at Python indeed. As you say it's a much worse language than many others that were equally available to anyone. And yet somehow it's at the the core of the last 15 years of data science, machine learning and whatnot. If Mathematica had been open-sourced twenty years ago it wouldn't have taken the place of Python. It probably would be even more niche today - and worse.
  - bborud 4y ago
    Python ended up at the core of data science because it was capable of serving a community. A community that produced comprehensive computational libraries, which, combined with the low threshold for getting started, made it more accessible for an audience that is interested in computation first and programming second. This is largely the same audience as for tools like Matlab and Mathematica. And to serve that market it didn't have to be a good programming language. You won't find most data scientists discussing the finer points of functional programming or OO. They'll be discussing what mathematical techniques to use or what stages to string together in order to achieve the computation they want. If you have ever worked with typical data scientists, most of them aren't even half way competent software engineers. What Python shows is that community beats technical excellence. By orders of magnitude. Whether or not Mathematica is a better language is irrelevant as it doesn't have the properties required a large community contributing value for free. We can't know if Mathematica could have taken the place of Python if it was open sourced, because it wasn't open sourced. But it given that it had a more potent programming model, it could have led to a very different path from model to running software, for instance. And it could have made distributed computation arrive a lot earlier. But it is actually quite a bit more challenging for Mathematica than that since its licensing terms are stricter than products you might compare it to, like Matlab. I don't think Mathematica would even have to be open sourced to be more successful - it would just have to be a less unattractive value proposition. Compare the revenue of Mathworks vs Wolfram Research, for instance. And then take into account that Mathematica has a much more potent programming model that could have far wider applicability than Matlab. And keep in mind: Matlab doesn't even have a programming model as potent as Mathematica. I think that the smartest thing Wolfram could have done would have been to open source the language, the runtime, and a reasonable standard library. Then they could have built a business on top of that of reasonably priced interactive software with GUIs, visualization tools, developer tools to make stand-alone applications, server applications for distributed computation and a SaaS solution for customers who want to run computation in the cloud. And it isn't like Mathworks didn't miss the boat too. But they are still an order of magnitude more successful than Wolfram Research. Which still makes Wolfram Research the slowest kid in the class in terms of unrealized potential.

tableofzero 4y ago

By far the most popular programming language in the world is propriatary -- Excel.

catchclose8919 4y ago
There's many open-source alternatives to Excel. Rarely used, but it settles any fear of lock in. This also made the area palatable for other commercial competitors to enter the space - Google-sheets drive A TON of enterprise org work nowadays. You could say that open-source alternatives immensely popularized spreadsheets and resulted in the very nice ecosystem we have now. Sure, heave finance user stick to MS Excell because MS is pressured to cater very well to their needs, else they will move away to other free or paid alternatives. Also, there's a reason why multi-dimensional spreadheets are not more popular despite solving so many problems of regular spreadheets: all are proprietary and very different one from another - you probably pick smth like Quantrix (https://quantrix.com/products/quantrix-modeler/ https://quantrix.com/products/quantrix-modeler/), and you'd get insane prices and 100% lock-in... better stick to Excell and/or its open-source and/or free alternatives despite being a worse tool :)
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Since when is Google sheets not proprietary?
capableweb 4y ago
Excel is built with programming language and can certainly be used as one, but that doesn't mean it is one. It's also a bit anal to classify Excel as a programming language, most people would say spreadsheets are a tool, where you could write programs, but again, doesn't mean it's a programming language. At most, I'd give you that Excel is a tool that can do "visual programming", but that's far of from being a "programming language".
- zaphar 4y ago
  This is unfair and a far too narrow definition of programming language. Excel sits very squarely in the functional reactive language space. Just because most of it's users don't "know" they are programming and most of our common tools don't work with it doesn't change the fact that it has pretty much all of the building blocks that any programming language gives you. Are there domains where Excel is awkward to use? Absolutely. The same can be said about pretty much any programming language. Excel deserves to have the label of programming language even if it shuns that label due to it's target audience.

chobytes 4y ago

I can assure you its widely used by certain fields in academia. Im currently a research assistant in physics at a large lab, and mathematica is ubiquitous.