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Comment by taliesinb | Hacker News Reader

I think you're missing the point about why the Wolfram Language is going to be useful on a PI. I don't think the majority case will be mathematics. See here for some ideas:

http://blog.wolfram.com/2013/11/21/putting-the-wolfram-langu...

And re free tools: I doubt very much that Sage has any mechanism for flashing LEDs through the GPIO pins of the Pi, or doing image processing on a RaspiCam, or balancing an inverted pendulum using control theory, or modelling and controlling a sous vide cooker.

For the tinkerer, getting an embedded device to do something cool isn't going to lead to bankruptcy in older age.

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I've always wondered, who are these sycophants who are always cheering Wolfram in his long self-aggrandising blog posts? Are they his employees or something?

I suppose it is your prerogative to classify employees as sycophants if you want.

From talking to other people at the company I know of only two Wolfram employees who are active on HN, being myself and carlob.

I don't think I cheer Wolfram, particularly. He's arrogant, sure, his posts are self-aggrandizing (or rather product-aggrandizing), sure -- although I don't think that these are remarkable properties for a CEO to have.

But we have some really nice technology that not many people seem to know very much about, so I comment a lot about it when the opportunity arises. Also, I think NKS has some cool stuff in it -- that's how I got associated with the company in the first place, through an amazing summer school experienc in Pisa, Italy.

> I doubt very much that Sage has any mechanism for flashing LEDs through the GPIO pins of the Pi

You use the RPi.GPIO module, as follows:

    import RPi.GPIO as GPIO

There's some more information here:

https://code.google.com/p/raspberry-gpio-python/wiki/BasicUs...

Good to know, thanks for the link.

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