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Comment by eigenspace | Hacker News Reader

Okay, so I read the post and I'm still not clear on what the actual difference is between Mathematica and the Wolfram Engine. Does anyone have any insight here?

Presumably this isn't intended to cannibalize Mathematica sales so I'd expect that many of the things I'm used to doing in Mathematica wouldn't work here but I don't really see any discussion of what it can't do.

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Came here to ask the same question, and even with the answers you've already received, it still seems very murky.

If you look on their web site for Mathematica[1] it has several bullet points that includes the Wolfram Engine. One of the other separate points is "Wolfram Algorithmbase"[2], so presumably all those algorithms are not part of the engine and only available if you buy full Mathematica.

[1] http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/

[2] http://www.wolfram.com/algorithmbase/

Can someone confirm this?

The Algorithmbase is 99.999% of what makes Mathematica useful compared to any language with a decent REPL or notebook setup.

I can't really imagine a use case for the Wolfram Language if I'm not going to use anything listed in http://www.wolfram.com/algorithmbase/

Mathematica also has god-tier documentation and an interesting and very unique programming language.

I personally hate programming in Mathematica, but it is interesting and deserving of an open implementation.

From the article "...with all its computational intelligence, algorithms, knowledgebase, and so on"

But the "its" that the article is referring to is the Wolfram Engine. It doesn't say that is all the algorithms in Mathematica. And the Mathematica website lists Algorithm Base and Wolfram Engine as two separate line items, which is at least surprising if one is contained in the other.

I actually believe the Algorithm Base is probably included, but it's definitely anything but clear from the website or any of the press release. The Mathematica website makes them seem like two completely separate unconnected components.

It's really unclear what is included in Wolfram Engine and what is included only in Mathematica... the above was just one obvious example. It would be very nice to have a concise list.

For practical purposes, nothing. If you have used Mathematica in the past, and know what it is: the "Wolfram Engine" is basically the Mathematica kernel.

Note that this free version only includes the kernel, not the notebook interface. But there is nascent support for Jupyter, so productive use is very much possible.

"I'd expect that many of the things I'm used to doing in Mathematica wouldn't work here"

What's amazing is that this isn't true. There are no _technical_ restrictions. You can't do Manipulate because the notebook interface is no there (or rather: it's there but it's read-only). But all the computational power is available.

Mathematica is basically a programming environment for the Wolfram Language. You can think of Mathematica as a desktop version of Jupyter Notebook for Wolfram Language.

I realize that. But what I said was that I'm not clear on what the 'Wolfram Engine' is and what it cannot do. It doesn't seem like a full implementation of the Wolfram Language for free, but I don't actually know.

Or is it that it's missing the Mathematica front end but has a full backend kernel implementation?

Yeah, now I understand your question. Reading the blog post made me think it would actually be a full implementation of the Wolfram Language for free.

So I was curious and signed up for a developer license. I got to the confirmation page, which helpfully told me to run "WolframScript" to activate the license. But there was no download link, so I googled around and found this[1] page. They seem to only have packages for Fedora and Debian-based systems, but no biggie. I used `debtap` to convert it to a package that pacman can install, and then, moment of truth...

   $ wolframscript 
   WolframKernel not found.
   Use -configure to set WOLFRAMSCRIPT_KERNELPATH
   Or export WolframKernel=/yourpath/WolframKernel

Uhhh... okay? And where do I get this WolframKernel from? I looked around my Wolfram Account page, and I don't see anywhere I can get this from. Google also doesn't help me here.

So... it seems you probably need a full Mathematica/Wolfram license before you can use this anyway?

Well, that's disappointing.

EDIT: OK, you can actually download it from [2]. My bad.

[1] https://account.wolfram.com/products/downloads/wolframscript

[2] https://www.wolfram.com/engine/

This the correct download page: https://www.wolfram.com/engine/

You get a file `WolframEngine_12.0.0_LINUX.sh` about 1 GiB.

Click the Download button on

https://www.wolfram.com/developer/

Its linked from the article.

I see, thank you. I must have clicked that link to sign up for a developer license, but somehow I don't remember being offered to download the thing.

I feel silly now, but that was pretty confusing.

For me it was being downloaded in the background. Don't remember exactly which button starts the download though.

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