WLJS Notebook – Open-source web-based notebook interface for Wolfram Language

Being able to build a graph network with just a single line of code where the vertices matched an image I dropped in was pretty cool and just one of a bazillion things it can do outside of just your calculus homework.

The annoying side is that it costs money, is proprietary, and all that goes with it. I can sometimes do something in a single line of code or two that would take a lot more code in Python, but sometimes it's still just faster to do in Python as the Wolfram language is some kind of Term Rewriting System that is more like Lisp or Functional programming than imperative and sometimes I don't have the right mental model and it's hard to find answers on Stack Overflow.

I think a lot of math academics love it. People use it in many fields too like engineering, economics...etc, but probably a bit niche. I assume most data science people are mostly doing Python now with a core group of stats folks still doing R or SAS or Minitab.

I'd definitely encourage giving it a quick try just because you are working in a closely related field and so might occasionally run into cases where Wolfram is actually a better tool for the job.

There are some very respected people that the company employs doing good work pushing the limits of different equation solvers and that sort of thing. Whatever one thinks of the man Wolfram himself, I think its an impressive company and probably a good example of a piece of software that is on the cutting edge and also wouldn't be viable as an open source project (too many PhDs required to support it for that tbh, and definitely not very accessible to contribute to).

And yes, it is expensive, but not prohibitively so for interested hobbyists. I pay for a personal edition, but my work pays quite a bit more than that. If you are affiliated with a school, see if they have deals or computers with it they can make available. Most schools with big physics or engineering or applied math programs are going to have it licensed.

It depends what you mean by "data science", but for stats, R or Origin (also expensive) would be better. Matlab (another paid option) is typically used for for numerical work (e.g. signal analysis). Mathematica is best at symbolic stuff.

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