What's with the surge of Wolfram stories on Hacker News lately?

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).

kgwgk

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

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

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.

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-3d-im...

https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-10/symbolic-geome...

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!

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