Based on an amazing showcase[1] Mathematica is right at the top of my list of languages to learn if it (and at least some of the surrounding tooling) ever becomes open source. I wonder how many of those examples would give useful results in Mathics, or what their equivalents would be.
The biggest thing missing from SageMath is a step by step solver. (Edit to add a caveat, I'm sure many professionals depend on minutiae of one or the other)
Feature-wise I'd say Sage has more Mathematica functionality than Octave does for MATLAB. Sage is not trying to be compatible however presumably it wouldn't be that hard if the functionality is there?
Sage is a bit of a Frankenstein though
Advanced Expression Manipulation > Prevent expression evaluation: https://docs.sympy.org/latest/tutorials/intro-tutorial/manip...
> There are generally two ways to prevent the evaluation, either pass an evaluate=False parameter while constructing the expression, or create an evaluation stopper by wrapping the expression with UnevaluatedExpr.
From "disabling automatic simplification in sympy" https://stackoverflow.com/a/48847102 :
> A simpler way to disable automatic evaluation is to use context manager evaluate. For example,
from sympy.core.evaluate import evaluate
from sympy.abc import x,y,z
with evaluate(False):
print(x/x)
IIRC there is a Wolfram Jupyter kernel?
WolframResearch/WolframLanguageForJupyter: https://github.com/WolframResearch/WolframLanguageForJupyter
mathics/IMathics is the Jupyter kernel for mathics: https://github.com/mathics/IMathics@main#egg=imathics
#pip install jupyter_console imathics
#conda install -c conda-forge -y jupyter_console jupyterlab
mamba install -y jupyter_console jupyterlab
jupyter console
jupyter kernelspec list
pip install -e git+https://github.com/mathics/imathics@main#egg=mathics
jupyter console --kernel=
%?
%logstart?
%logstart -o demo.log.py
The Python Jupyter kernel checks IPython.display.display()'d objects for methods in order to represent an object in a command line shell, graphical shell (qtconsole), notebook (.ipynb), or a latex document: _repr_mimebundle_(), _repr_html_(), _repr_json_(), _repr_latex_(), ..., __repr__(), __str__()
The last expression in an input cell of a notebook is implictly displayed:
from IPython.display import display
%display? # argspec, docstring
%display?? # ' & source code
display(last_expresssion)
Sage is amazing and valuable but the value of Mathematica is the cognitive ease of having one unified platform for everything. Sage is a nice integration of multiple specialized tools under a rudimentary common framework but requires a lot more mental overhead to tie it all together.
I consider Mathematica a true gift to humanity.
On the other hand there are lots of Common Lisp systems which are capable of running the venerable Maxima/Macsyma.
> not sure what the status of Octave
I'm glad that Octave and Scilab exist, but I switched to NumPy and never looked back.
https://octave.org/news/release/2022/11/02/octave-7.3.0-rele...
> https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/pricing/home-hobby/
These prices are not cheap, but affordable if you are serious about your hobby.
Mathematica could be so much more, but basically until Stephen dies, it will remain an academic mathematical tool. It’s a complete coin flip as to when he dies the company will collapse or thrive, but it’s just so far away from anything they have plans for at the moment that it’s just impossible to guess.
At least there's a minimized version in Raspbian. It ran fine on an old B model, snappy enough to play around.
I understand that Wolfram made unrealistic agreements with the original programmers, incompatible with growing a large organization to support his evolving vision for Mathematica. Rather than renegotiating, he attempted a maneuver that did not survive a court challenge. The original programmers are now rich.
I cannot find any account of this on the web. There's an unrelated "Fields medalist car accident" that I again know from first-hand accounts, that also has no trace on the web. Huh.
So if anyone's wondering, this post does seem to be based on something, even if it's not easily verifiable.
I don't know here that "not easily verifiable" is deliberate, but it could be.
In the case of the Fields Medalist, one can read in major publications that they engaged a PR firm. Those articles don't specifically spell out sanitizing the web. If one already knows every detail of the event in question (in my case, confirmation includes overhearing him express concerns about a wrongful death lawsuit), an internet search finds many accounts relaying a cover story, and a single forum comment that correctly describes the event. That comment was apparently beyond the PR firm's reach.
Mathematica is a prime, tender and juicy target for modern reverse engineering tools.
That's not true: here is the pricing for the Home and Hobby licenses:
> https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/pricing/home-hobby/
These prices are not cheap, but affordable if you are serious about your hobby.