Wolfram|Alpha (1 Viewer)

[mcthings]

Wolfram|Alpha

 

[Shawn Shultzaberger]

Cool but looks like it has a long way to go.

 

[Scott McGillivray]

Could be interesting. I tried a few things and got some good info back. I am sure something like this will be as common as Google in the years to come.
P.S. there is a rule on the forum about not just posting a link. Ya need to have something to chit-chat about as well.

 

[Sam Posten]

Riiiiiise, rise from the dead!Wolfram LANGUAGE!http://reference.wolfram.com/language/

 

[Paul D G]

Wolfram has been around for years. I never found any personal use for it but I've occasionally come across articles that use it to compile statistical data, like this randomly searched for article:

http://mashable.com/2012/09/03/this-app-knows-more-about-your-facebook-account-than-you-do/

 

[DaveF]

I was a long-time Mathematica user, and fan of it. But I never understood Alpha. It couldn't solve even simple problems of interest to me. I understand it powers aspects the iPhone Siri service, but I've never used that aspect. I don't use Mathematica professionally currently, so am increasingly out of date on Wolfram's offerings. Will take a look at the Wolfram Language.

 

[DaveF]

Interesting. They're repackaging their Mathematica language as a full-blown language. The upside is that Mathematica has evolved into a very broad and versatile system. The downside is that it is a complex language. It is a very nested structure and becomes difficult to read with multiple levels of brackets and parentheses, and specific modifiers of arrows and colons and other syntactical bits.

 

[DaveF]

I watched the intro video to it. It makes more sense to me. Except I have no idea yet how I'd use it on my desktop. Or can I only doodle online? Or us it like Mathematica and costs $500 to get started. Need to read more tonight.

 

[Sam Posten]

Agreed. It's definitely a first gen release. The thing is it seems nobody else is doing much at the scale these guys are, I can't wait to see what the brainy uni kids build with it.

 

[Sam Posten]

The intro video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P9HqHVPeik&app=desktop

 

[DaveF]

Stephen Wolfram has been chipping at this for a lifetime. He wants to usher in the next paradigm shift in science. (See his gushing over Automatons a decade ago)The problem with this " language", as I crudely understand it, is it's really a proprietary database plus a computational language. This isn't Ruby, the cool new script than anyone can do anything with. This is Wolfram's system requiring their own data store. Imagine Wikipedia launching a language based on their data. Regardless. Thus is interesting. Proprietary languages aren't anything new. Matlab. Lab view. IDL. Mathematica. Those are the few I've played with. But this attempt at a universal approach to everything, backed by a database of everything, is new.