Q&A with Stephen Wolfram

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<button class="hamburger">&equiv;</button> <h1 id="logo"> <a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com">Stephen Wolfram <svg viewBox="6.252 51.944 1031.673 96.468"> <g id="logoSVG"> <path d="M643.657,60.162c1.429-0.357,2.501-0.714,3.572-0.714h0.536V53.91h-34.121v5.538h0.536 c4.287,0.357,7.503,1.072,9.468,1.965c1.787,0.894,2.68,1.965,2.68,3.216c0,1.072-0.179,2.322-0.357,3.751 s-0.893,4.288-1.965,8.218c-1.429,5.716-3.395,12.505-5.538,20.544c-2.144,7.682-4.645,16.436-7.503,26.439L588.456,55.16h-6.968 l-22.33,66.812c-4.823-16.971-8.218-29.297-10.719-37.693c-2.501-8.575-4.287-15.006-5.181-18.758c0-0.357-0.179-1.072-0.357-1.786 c-0.179-0.715-0.179-1.251-0.179-1.608c0-1.072,1.607-1.608,3.037-1.965c2.322-0.536,5.002-0.714,8.218-0.893h0.536V53.91h-38.23 v5.538h0.536c1.071,0,2.322,0.357,3.751,0.714c1.43,0.357,2.502,0.894,3.573,1.608c1.251,0.893,2.144,1.787,2.858,2.68 s1.251,2.144,1.607,3.394c1.608,5.538,4.646,16.257,9.111,32.514c4.466,16.078,8.933,31.799,13.22,46.805l0.179,0.357h6.432 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id="count">(51)</span></div> <div id="posts" class="grid heirs-width-1-2 heirs-width-full__600"> <div class="project wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1993-01-01 14:34:55"> <p class="date">January 1, 1993</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/stephen-wolfram-multiparadigm-man/'>Interview by Michael Swaine, <em>Dr. Dobb's Journal</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1993/01/01/if-you-were-writing-mathematica-today-what-would-you-leave-out/">If you were writing Mathematica today, what would you leave out?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>I&#8217;ll give you an example of something that I put into Mathematica that I thought was a good idea but that turned out not to be. It was this function called Short. It just has to do with printing our expressions&#8230;</p> <p>It goes through the expression [as] a tree and it has a certain amount of energy that starts off at the top of the tree, and it allocates the energy in different ways as it goes down the branches of the tree. It does a fairly nice job of showing you the structure of the expression with some little ellipses. As I say, it seemed like a good idea. The only catch is, nobody uses it. I haven&#8217;t used it in eons. Why do people not use it? I don&#8217;t know. But that&#8217;s an example of a &#8220;Designers Beware&#8221;.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="I&#8217;ll give you an example of something that I put into Mathematica that I thought was a good idea but that turned out not to be. It was this function called Short. It just has to do with printing our expressions&#8230; It goes through the expression [as] a tree and it has a certain amount of energy that starts off at the top of the tree, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> I’ll give you an example of something that I put into Mathematica that I thought was a good idea but that turned out not to be. It was this function called Short. It just has to do with printing our expressions… It goes through the expression [as] a tree and it has a certain amount of energy that starts off at the top of the tree, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1993-01-01 14:37:33"> <p class="date">January 1, 1993</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/stephen-wolfram-multiparadigm-man/'>Interview by Michael Swaine, <em>Dr. Dobb's Journal</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1993/01/01/youve-spent-a-significant-amount-of-time-doing-language-design-what-does-a-language-designer-really-spend-the-bulk-of-the-time-doing/">You’ve spent a significant amount of time doing language design. What does a language designer really spend the bulk of the time doing?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Almost all the time is spent trying to simplify the construct one comes up with. You start off with this idea about what capability you want it to have. Then the trick is, find the simplest, most transparent way to represent that.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Almost all the time is spent trying to simplify the construct one comes up with. You start off with this idea about what capability you want it to have. Then the trick is, find the simplest, most transparent way to represent that."> Almost all the time is spent trying to simplify the construct one comes up with. You start off with this idea about what capability you want it to have. Then the trick is, find the simplest, most transparent way to represent that. </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project business wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1993-01-01 22:32:26"> <p class="date">January 1, 1993</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/stephen-wolfram-multiparadigm-man/'>Interview by Michael Swaine, <em>Dr. Dobb's Journal</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1993/01/01/with-mathematica-did-you-set-out-to-create-an-application-program-or-a-programming-language-you-sell-it-as-an-application/">With Mathematica, did you set out to create an application program or a programming language? You sell it as an application.</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>I viewed the intellectually most significant [part] of the enterprise as being the creation of the elements of a programming language.</p> <p>[Selling it as an application] has to do with the practical problem of introducing programming languages. Programming languages are a surprisingly slow-moving field. Fortran was invented before I was born and C is more than 20 years old now. It&#8217;s kind of strange, in a world where computer hardware and the uses that computers are put to have advanced so rapidly, that programming languages have advanced so slowly. If you have some ideas about how programming languages should be set up, and you want people to actually try using them, there&#8217;s a question of how you get [them] to do that. Once people have gotten used to using a programming language, you have to do an awful lot to convince them that they should switch to something else. We were lucky. People started off using Mathematica like an extremely enhanced calculator. And if you get a few hundred thousand people using your thing for whatever reason, then you have a reasonable community to work on in developing the language for its own sake.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="I viewed the intellectually most significant [part] of the enterprise as being the creation of the elements of a programming language. [Selling it as an application] has to do with the practical problem of introducing programming languages. Programming languages are a surprisingly slow-moving field. Fortran was invented before I was born and C is more than 20 years old now. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> I viewed the intellectually most significant [part] of the enterprise as being the creation of the elements of a programming language. [Selling it as an application] has to do with the practical problem of introducing programming languages. Programming languages are a surprisingly slow-moving field. Fortran was invented before I was born and C is more than 20 years old now. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="business" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=business">Business</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1993-01-01 22:47:14"> <p class="date">January 1, 1993</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/stephen-wolfram-multiparadigm-man/'>Interview by Michael Swaine, <em>Dr. Dobb's Journal</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1993/01/01/youve-considered-making-a-thing-that-will-probably-be-called-m-that-is-essentially-mathematica-without-the-mathematics-but-how-seriously/">You’ve considered “making a thing that will probably be called M, that is essentially Mathematica without the mathematics”. But how seriously?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>We&#8217;ve built little Ms. There is no doubt that Mathematica without the mathematics will exist one day. The main issue for us is to figure out how it makes sense to distribute the thing. Right now there are particular application areas where people have written programs in Mathematica that don&#8217;t use the mathematical side of Mathematica, and those are the places where you start. But I believe that every application program should have a language underneath it, and it would be great if that language was a modern, highly capable language, not an imitation of Basic or some specially crafted language that just does things for databases, for example. That&#8217;s the niche I&#8217;m interested in seeing the Mathematica language go into in the future.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="We&#8217;ve built little Ms. There is no doubt that Mathematica without the mathematics will exist one day. The main issue for us is to figure out how it makes sense to distribute the thing. Right now there are particular application areas where people have written programs in Mathematica that don&#8217;t use the mathematical side of Mathematica, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> We’ve built little Ms. There is no doubt that Mathematica without the mathematics will exist one day. The main issue for us is to figure out how it makes sense to distribute the thing. Right now there are particular application areas where people have written programs in Mathematica that don’t use the mathematical side of Mathematica, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1993-01-01 22:48:22"> <p class="date">January 1, 1993</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/stephen-wolfram-multiparadigm-man/'>Interview by Michael Swaine, <em>Dr. Dobb's Journal</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1993/01/01/what-are-the-virtues-of-symbolic-languages-like-mathematica-vs-procedurally-based-languages-like-basic/">What are the virtues of symbolic languages like Mathematica vs. procedurally based languages like Basic?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>When you&#8217;re working with a procedurally based numerical language, there&#8217;s a lot of mysterious hidden state associated with what&#8217;s happening. For example, you have a standard program written in C, and you have various data structures, and you have subroutines that call each other and pass pointers to these data structures. If you want to look at one subroutine on its own and see what it&#8217;s doing, [to] feed this kind of input in and see what comes out, that&#8217;s pretty difficult to do in C. But in a symbolic language there&#8217;s no [problem], because whatever input might be given, you can always explicitly write it down; whatever output might come out, you can always explicitly see it. It&#8217;s always the same kind of object, always a symbolic data structure that you can explicitly see. There&#8217;s no idea that it&#8217;s some sort of mysterious pointer encoded in such and such a way.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="When you&#8217;re working with a procedurally based numerical language, there&#8217;s a lot of mysterious hidden state associated with what&#8217;s happening. For example, you have a standard program written in C, and you have various data structures, and you have subroutines that call each other and pass pointers to these data structures. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> When you’re working with a procedurally based numerical language, there’s a lot of mysterious hidden state associated with what’s happening. For example, you have a standard program written in C, and you have various data structures, and you have subroutines that call each other and pass pointers to these data structures. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1993-01-01 22:49:08"> <p class="date">January 1, 1993</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/stephen-wolfram-multiparadigm-man/'>Interview by Michael Swaine, <em>Dr. Dobb's Journal</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1993/01/01/what-were-the-intellectual-roots-of-mathematica/">What were the intellectual roots of Mathematica?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>I got to do a test run of some of the ideas in Mathematica in a system called SMP that I built in the late &rsquo;70s or early &rsquo;80s. It was more oriented toward computer algebra; it wasn&#8217;t as ambitious a system as Mathematica. What I did there was a very educational experience. I tried to impose on people what I thought to be a good, but rather an unusual model of programming&#8230; </p> <p>The model of programming was that of pattern matching and transformation rules. Pretty much everything in that system was done with pattern matching and transformation rules. If you were going to write programs in SMP they pretty much had to be in that paradigm.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="I got to do a test run of some of the ideas in Mathematica in a system called SMP that I built in the late &rsquo;70s or early &rsquo;80s. It was more oriented toward computer algebra; it wasn&#8217;t as ambitious a system as Mathematica. What I did there was a very educational experience. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> I got to do a test run of some of the ideas in Mathematica in a system called SMP that I built in the late ’70s or early ’80s. It was more oriented toward computer algebra; it wasn’t as ambitious a system as Mathematica. What I did there was a very educational experience. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1993-01-01 22:54:31"> <p class="date">January 1, 1993</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/stephen-wolfram-multiparadigm-man/'>Interview by Michael Swaine, <em>Dr. Dobb's Journal</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1993/01/01/when-you-were-first-testing-some-ideas-in-mathematica-in-smp-would-have-been-about-the-time-clocksin-and-mellish-were-bringing-prolog-to-a-wider-audience-with-their-book-were-you-influenced-by-prolo/">When you were first testing your ideas for Mathematica in SMP, it would have been about the time Clocksin and Mellish were bringing Prolog to a wider audience with their book. Were you influenced by Prolog at that time?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>No, actually I wasn&#8217;t. I had never written a program in Prolog. I&#8217;d read the manual. The main thing that I was trying to do was to imitate what seemed to be what happens when you do mathematical calculations; that is, that you are continually applying rules of mathematics. The transformation-rule model has not been widely adopted. Prolog was an attempt to adopt it&#8230; </p> <p>Prolog [has a] fatal flaw. A language where fundamental operations give you no clue as to how long they might take or what&#8217;s going on isn&#8217;t going to cut it. You have to give the user a reasonable conceptual model of what the computer is doing. It doesn&#8217;t matter if they&#8217;re a factor of ten wrong in knowing how many instructions it&#8217;s going to take, but it does matter if they can&#8217;t estimate whether this is an exponential time algorithm or something else.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="No, actually I wasn&#8217;t. I had never written a program in Prolog. I&#8217;d read the manual. The main thing that I was trying to do was to imitate what seemed to be what happens when you do mathematical calculations; that is, that you are continually applying rules of mathematics. The transformation-rule model has not been widely adopted. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> No, actually I wasn’t. I had never written a program in Prolog. I’d read the manual. The main thing that I was trying to do was to imitate what seemed to be what happens when you do mathematical calculations; that is, that you are continually applying rules of mathematics. The transformation-rule model has not been widely adopted. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1993-01-01 23:00:04"> <p class="date">January 1, 1993</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/stephen-wolfram-multiparadigm-man/'>Interview by Michael Swaine, <em>Dr. Dobb's Journal</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1993/01/01/how-did-smp-influence-mathematica/">How did SMP influence Mathematica?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>One of the ideas I had in SMP was, &#8220;Figure out a good programming paradigm and just stick to it&#8221;. This was a mistake. I think it&#8217;s not a trivial mistake. You might think, &#8220;If there is a natural way to specify how programs should work, that maybe hooks into some way that has to do with how the brain processes ideas about things, then you should just figure out that way and stick to it&#8221;. But it turns out that while there are some kinds of programs that can be written very nicely using this [transformation rule] paradigm, there are others that are horrendous to write using it, but that are straightforward to write using, say, procedural programming or functional programming&#8230; </p> <p>What I decided to do in building Mathematica, and have been very happy with, is to admit that there is going to be more than one paradigm for writing programs. Then the trick is to put in those paradigms in such a way that the edges fit together properly, so that you can move easily from one paradigm to another. So you can have pure functions and have them interact with transformation rules and interactive procedural programming and so on, and have a fairly seamless interface.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="One of the ideas I had in SMP was, &#8220;Figure out a good programming paradigm and just stick to it&#8221;. This was a mistake. I think it&#8217;s not a trivial mistake. You might think, &#8220;If there is a natural way to specify how programs should work, that maybe hooks into some way that has to do with how the brain processes ideas about things, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> One of the ideas I had in SMP was, “Figure out a good programming paradigm and just stick to it”. This was a mistake. I think it’s not a trivial mistake. You might think, “If there is a natural way to specify how programs should work, that maybe hooks into some way that has to do with how the brain processes ideas about things, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1993-01-01 23:01:44"> <p class="date">January 1, 1993</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/stephen-wolfram-multiparadigm-man/'>Interview by Michael Swaine, <em>Dr. Dobb's Journal</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1993/01/01/what-kinds-of-design-ideas-went-into-the-writing-of-mathematica/">What kinds of design ideas went into the writing of Mathematica?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>One way I tried to design Mathematica was the following: Think about computations that one wants to do, and think about well-defined chunks of those computations that one could give a definite name to and do lots of times. A very simple one might be <tt><a href='https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Nest.html'>Nest</a></tt>, a function in Mathematica that is sort of an iteration construct. There are a lot of programs one writes where one wants to do that, so it makes sense to give that thing a definite name, and say, &#8220;This is a chunk of computation that this language provides a primitive for doing&#8221;. In a sense it&#8217;s like [making] up the instruction set for a RISC machine. So [in developing] Mathematica I wrote a lot of sample programs in Mathematica, and my principle was if I keep on having to use an idiom it should have a name&#8230; </p> <p>One principle is to keep the number of fundamentally different ideas fairly small, and then with each of those ideas to pin a lot of actual elements of the system on top of [it], because if you pin enough stuff on top of an idea, people are going to have to understand that idea to use the system. One of the mistakes that one has to fight in designing is to say, &#8220;For this particular thing we want to do, maybe there&#8217;s a nice mechanism we can make up, a special mechanism, say, for the way Poisson series work&#8221;. This will be a big mistake, because nobody will understand this mechanism. But if you have that mechanism be the mechanism that&#8217;s used for all list-like objects, say, then anybody who can use the system is going to understand the basic mechanism. Moreover, their understanding of the mechanism is going to grow if they see it used in a whole variety of different of places.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="One way I tried to design Mathematica was the following: Think about computations that one wants to do, and think about well-defined chunks of those computations that one could give a definite name to and do lots of times. A very simple one might be <a href='https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Nest.html'>Nest</a>, a function in Mathematica that is sort of an iteration construct. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> One way I tried to design Mathematica was the following: Think about computations that one wants to do, and think about well-defined chunks of those computations that one could give a definite name to and do lots of times. A very simple one might be <a href='https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Nest.html'>Nest</a>, a function in Mathematica that is sort of an iteration construct. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1993-01-01 23:03:39"> <p class="date">January 1, 1993</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/stephen-wolfram-multiparadigm-man/'>Interview by Michael Swaine, <em>Dr. Dobb's Journal</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1993/01/01/is-there-anything-youd-do-differently-if-you-were-writing-mathematica-today/">Is there anything you’d do differently if you were writing Mathematica today?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Were I to build Mathematica again I would probably have 5 percent less stuff in it.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Were I to build Mathematica again I would probably have 5 percent less stuff in it."> Were I to build Mathematica again I would probably have 5 percent less stuff in it. </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project business wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1993-03-01 17:24:10"> <p class="date">March 1, 1993</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/interview-stephen-wolfram-mathematica-education/'>Interview by Paul Wellin, <em>Mathematica in Education</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1993/03/01/what-is-the-breakdown-of-educational-vs-research-users-of-mathematica/">What is the breakdown of educational vs. research users of Mathematica?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>That&#8217;s a bit of a difficult question to answer. Because when you have a class that uses Mathematica, how do you count the individual students that are going through there? I think that about 40% of the number of copies of Mathematica that are out there are in the educational sector. About 23% of the revenue that comes in from sales of Mathematica comes from the educational sector.</p> <p>When I say educational sector, I mean colleges, high schools and universities, which includes much research usage of Mathematica. It&#8217;s hard to be able to come up with exact figures.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="That&#8217;s a bit of a difficult question to answer. Because when you have a class that uses Mathematica, how do you count the individual students that are going through there? I think that about 40% of the number of copies of Mathematica that are out there are in the educational sector. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> That’s a bit of a difficult question to answer. Because when you have a class that uses Mathematica, how do you count the individual students that are going through there? I think that about 40% of the number of copies of Mathematica that are out there are in the educational sector. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="business" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=business">Business</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1993-03-01 17:26:48"> <p class="date">March 1, 1993</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/interview-stephen-wolfram-mathematica-education/'>Interview by Paul Wellin, <em>Mathematica in Education</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1993/03/01/i-noticed-a-rather-long-debate-on-the-nets-recently-about-the-current-role-of-mathematica-some-people-were-arguing-that-presentation-features-should-not-be-focused-on-that-all-work-should-go-in/">I noticed a rather long debate on the nets recently about the current “role” of Mathematica. Some people were arguing that presentation features should not be focused on—that all work should go into algorithm improvement. I am sure that a similar argument could be put forth about the Mathematica language itself as well. What is your view of its present role?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>In terms of algorithm development, I am really very satisfied with the point we&#8217;re at and the rate at which things are progressing. My big test for these things in terms of, for example, algebraic algorithms is to be able to clearly say that if there is an integral you can think about doing, then Mathematica will be able to do it better than any person, or any other computer system. This is the same kind of issue as has arisen in playing chess. There&#8217;s a point at which eventually the computers are actually just better than people at doing it. And we&#8217;re pretty close to that point with many kinds of integrals.</p> <p>One area in which you will see some significant development is in the area of Mathematica interactive documents. People have talked for quite a few years about &#8220;hypertext&#8221; and &#8220;multimedia&#8221; and electronic books, and so on. But there really isn&#8217;t a hell of a lot out there that actually makes any sense&#8212;except for Mathematica notebooks. The fact is that for all the hype that has gone into the idea of electronic books in the publishing community and the computer industry, the one example of this that actually seems to be working is Mathematica notebooks.</p> <p>There are some things you&#8217;d like to be able to do with Mathematica notebooks that you can&#8217;t do now. For example, including beautiful typeset mathematical equations. That is something we are going to make work, and I think in a very nice way.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="In terms of algorithm development, I am really very satisfied with the point we&#8217;re at and the rate at which things are progressing. My big test for these things in terms of, for example, algebraic algorithms is to be able to clearly say that if there is an integral you can think about doing, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> In terms of algorithm development, I am really very satisfied with the point we’re at and the rate at which things are progressing. My big test for these things in terms of, for example, algebraic algorithms is to be able to clearly say that if there is an integral you can think about doing, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project education wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1993-03-01 17:30:06"> <p class="date">March 1, 1993</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/interview-stephen-wolfram-mathematica-education/'>Interview by Paul Wellin, <em>Mathematica in Education</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1993/03/01/from-an-educational-point-of-view-would-you-put-the-mathematica-language-on-a-par-with-fortran-or-pascal/">From an educational point of view, would you put the Mathematica language on a par with Fortran or Pascal?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>People might attack me for immodesty, but I think in the present day and age, if you&#8217;re teaching general people about programming computers, Mathematica is far and away the best programming language to use&#8212;and I&#8217;ll tell you why. There are a certain set of people, who when they are grown up, will write things like compilers. Those people need to know C and they need to know how to build parsers. But in the world right now, there are probably only 50 people who write compilers. And probably most of them learned what they needed outside of school, anyway.</p> <p>What one should be trying to teach when one teaches people about programming, are two things. First of all, one should teach them the practicalities of actually doing programming that they might use later on in life. Second of all, one should teach them concepts about what it means to program a computer, and what ways of thinking programming involves.</p> <p>Taking the second of those things first, teaching the concepts of programming in a language like C or Pascal is crazy. You can only teach a very small subset of what is known today about the ways it makes sense to do programming.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="People might attack me for immodesty, but I think in the present day and age, if you&#8217;re teaching general people about programming computers, Mathematica is far and away the best programming language to use&#8212;and I&#8217;ll tell you why. There are a certain set of people, who when they are grown up, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> People might attack me for immodesty, but I think in the present day and age, if you’re teaching general people about programming computers, Mathematica is far and away the best programming language to use—and I’ll tell you why. There are a certain set of people, who when they are grown up, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="education" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=education">Education</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1996-06-01 14:35:19"> <p class="date">June 1, 1996</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/interview-stephen-wolfram-euromath-bulletin/'>Interview by Stephen Collart, <em>Euromath Bulletin</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1996/06/01/the-reception-of-the-mathematica-system-in-the-mathematical-community-has-on-occasion-raised-unexpectedly-high-feelings-and-has-sometimes-appeared-to-take-on-the-dimensions-of-a-zealots-war-of-disp/">The reception of the Mathematica system in the mathematical community has on occasion raised unexpectedly high feelings, and has sometimes appeared to take on the dimensions of a zealot’s war of disparagement against hype. Do you have an explanation for this fairly unique occurrence? What is your view of the matter?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>I&#8217;m not quite sure what you mean. Any successful enterprise will have its detractors&mdash;that&#8217;s just the way the world works. I guess mathematicians can sometimes get a little more righteously out of control than other folk&mdash;witness the Unabomber. But I think that considering the level of success we&#8217;ve had, there have been surprisingly few detractors&mdash;even in mathematics.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="I&#8217;m not quite sure what you mean. Any successful enterprise will have its detractors&mdash;that&#8217;s just the way the world works. I guess mathematicians can sometimes get a little more righteously out of control than other folk&mdash;witness the Unabomber. But I think that considering the level of success we&#8217;ve had, there have been surprisingly few detractors&mdash;even in mathematics."> I’m not quite sure what you mean. Any successful enterprise will have its detractors—that’s just the way the world works. I guess mathematicians can sometimes get a little more righteously out of control than other folk—witness the Unabomber. But I think that considering the level of success we’ve had, there have been surprisingly few detractors—even in mathematics. </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1996-06-01 16:58:04"> <p class="date">June 1, 1996</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/interview-stephen-wolfram-euromath-bulletin/'>Interview by Stephen Collart, <em>Euromath Bulletin</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1996/06/01/what-is-your-most-important-long-term-plan-for-mathematica/">What is your most important long-term plan for Mathematica?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Well, I&#8217;m not sure how long term you mean. I&#8217;m sure Mathematica will still be being developed when I&#8217;m an old man. The core will be the same, but there&#8217;ll be lots of new stuff made possible by new computer technology, new mathematics and so on. My plan with our company is to keep doing what we&#8217;ve been doing for 10 years already&mdash;trying to push the state of the art, and trying to do everything we do in a way that is really set up to survive for posterity. We&#8217;ve managed to build a great team of people at the company, and I think we&#8217;re well set up to go on discovering and implementing important things for a long time to come.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Well, I&#8217;m not sure how long term you mean. I&#8217;m sure Mathematica will still be being developed when I&#8217;m an old man. The core will be the same, but there&#8217;ll be lots of new stuff made possible by new computer technology, new mathematics and so on. My plan with our company is to keep doing what we&#8217;ve been doing for 10 years already&mdash;trying to push the state of the art, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Well, I’m not sure how long term you mean. I’m sure Mathematica will still be being developed when I’m an old man. The core will be the same, but there’ll be lots of new stuff made possible by new computer technology, new mathematics and so on. My plan with our company is to keep doing what we’ve been doing for 10 years already—trying to push the state of the art, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1996-06-01 19:06:29"> <p class="date">June 1, 1996</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/interview-stephen-wolfram-euromath-bulletin/'>Interview by Stephen Collart, <em>Euromath Bulletin</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1996/06/01/what-has-been-in-your-view-the-most-important-effect-of-mathematica-since-its-release/">What has been in your view the most important effect of Mathematica since its release?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Basically that we&#8217;ve defined a whole new way for people to use computers&#8212;and that more than a million people have found out that it&#8217;s a good idea. For your audience, I&#8217;d say the most important thing is that lots and lots of people from all sorts of fields have now been exposed through Mathematica to issues about computers and mathematics&#8212;and have started to care about them.</p> <p>I guess I have to say that I really don&#8217;t know all the effects Mathematica has had. Only a tiny fraction of our users ever explicitly tell us what they do with Mathematica. People have certainly told me that Mathematica has revolutionized all sorts of fields&#8212;including some I&#8217;ve barely heard of. It&#8217;s really a wonderful experience to build a tool like Mathematica, and then every year to see people doing more and more impressive things with it. I&#8217;ve put an incredible amount of work into Mathematica, and finding out that it makes a difference to so many people is really great.</p> <p>From an intellectual point of view, I think one of the more important effects of Mathematica is that it has communicated advanced computer language ideas to a much wider audience than they ever reached before. There are a huge number of people who had only ever used languages like Fortran before, but who now understand symbolic expressions, rule-based programming and so on. I think that&#8217;s pretty important for the progress of computing as an intellectual endeavor.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Basically that we&#8217;ve defined a whole new way for people to use computers&#8212;and that more than a million people have found out that it&#8217;s a good idea. For your audience, I&#8217;d say the most important thing is that lots and lots of people from all sorts of fields have now been exposed through Mathematica to issues about computers and mathematics&#8212;and have started to care about them. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Basically that we’ve defined a whole new way for people to use computers—and that more than a million people have found out that it’s a good idea. For your audience, I’d say the most important thing is that lots and lots of people from all sorts of fields have now been exposed through Mathematica to issues about computers and mathematics—and have started to care about them. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1996-06-01 19:13:11"> <p class="date">June 1, 1996</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/interview-stephen-wolfram-euromath-bulletin/'>Interview by Stephen Collart, <em>Euromath Bulletin</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1996/06/01/where-has-mathematica-not-met-your-expectations/">Where has Mathematica not met your expectations?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Technically I think Mathematica is great. I&#8217;m always thinking of more things to make it do, but I&#8217;m very happy with what&#8217;s there. One thing I guess I&#8217;m slightly disappointed about is that we don&#8217;t seem to have managed to communicate some of the intellectual advances in Mathematica as thoroughly as I&#8217;d like to people in areas like computer science and mathematics. I think some very exciting intellectual things have been achieved in Mathematica&#8212;particularly in the area of language design&#8212;but there are still lots of people in fields like academic computer science who don&#8217;t understand what&#8217;s been done.</p> <p>I guess another thing is that some people who I would have thought really should don&#8217;t seem to appreciate the overall design of Mathematica. One of the things I&#8217;m proudest of in Mathematica is the way all the pieces fit together&#8212;the fact that there are a fairly small number of powerful principles from which the whole system is built. I would have thought that mathematicians and people like that would immediately appreciate this kind of thing. And certainly some do. But among mathematicians and the like there is still an amazing number of feature hunters out there who don&#8217;t seem to understand the crucial value&#8212;both intellectual and practical&#8212;of good design. It seems like the axiomatic training and abstract aesthetic of mathematics doesn&#8217;t seem to translate as often as I would have expected to an understanding of system design.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Technically I think Mathematica is great. I&#8217;m always thinking of more things to make it do, but I&#8217;m very happy with what&#8217;s there. One thing I guess I&#8217;m slightly disappointed about is that we don&#8217;t seem to have managed to communicate some of the intellectual advances in Mathematica as thoroughly as I&#8217;d like to people in areas like computer science and mathematics. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Technically I think Mathematica is great. I’m always thinking of more things to make it do, but I’m very happy with what’s there. One thing I guess I’m slightly disappointed about is that we don’t seem to have managed to communicate some of the intellectual advances in Mathematica as thoroughly as I’d like to people in areas like computer science and mathematics. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1996-06-01 19:19:43"> <p class="date">June 1, 1996</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/interview-stephen-wolfram-euromath-bulletin/'>Interview by Stephen Collart, <em>Euromath Bulletin</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1996/06/01/with-the-benefit-of-hindsight-is-there-anything-you-would-have-developed-differently-in-mathematica/">With the benefit of hindsight, is there anything you would have developed differently in Mathematica?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Surprisingly little, actually. Of course it&#8217;s very scary when one makes a system that lots of people use: one has to get things right the first time&#8212;one can&#8217;t go back later and make incompatible changes. But eight years on I&#8217;m actually very pleased with how few things I would have done differently.</p> <p>I guess there is one decision that I sometimes think about: the decision to call the thing we built &#8220;Mathematica&#8221;. I had thought that referring to mathematics was a good thing to do&#8212;but I didn&#8217;t realize how many people out there really really despise mathematics. They think mathematics is just something unpleasant that they have to do in school, and they want to forget about it as quickly as possible. The funny thing is, though, that in fact they&#8217;re often using mathematics&#8212;at least through Mathematica&#8212;doing all sorts of kinds of analysis, modeling and so on. I think mathematics really has a major image problem, and with the name Mathematica we&#8217;re at least somewhat tied to it. For all sorts of reasons, I&#8217;d love to improve the general image of mathematics&#8212;and I&#8217;ve tried doing it in various ways&#8212;but I think most academic mathematicians are still in denial that there&#8217;s any problem. Perhaps they&#8217;ll change their minds when the public makes it clearer that there isn&#8217;t going to be any more money for mathematics unless people get a better impression of it.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Surprisingly little, actually. Of course it&#8217;s very scary when one makes a system that lots of people use: one has to get things right the first time&#8212;one can&#8217;t go back later and make incompatible changes. But eight years on I&#8217;m actually very pleased with how few things I would have done differently. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Surprisingly little, actually. Of course it’s very scary when one makes a system that lots of people use: one has to get things right the first time—one can’t go back later and make incompatible changes. But eight years on I’m actually very pleased with how few things I would have done differently. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project mathematics wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1996-06-01 19:24:09"> <p class="date">June 1, 1996</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/interview-stephen-wolfram-euromath-bulletin/'>Interview by Stephen Collart, <em>Euromath Bulletin</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1996/06/01/some-observers-see-a-research-crisis-in-mathematical-computation-a-dearth-of-both-fundamental-and-practical-advances-others-are-concerned-about-a-looming-funding-crisis-how-do-you-see-the-situatio/">Some observers see a research crisis in mathematical computation—a dearth of both fundamental and practical advances; others are concerned about a looming funding crisis. How do you see the situation?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Well, I think Wolfram Research has one of the largest&#8212;if not the largest&#8212;R&#038;D efforts in mathematical computation anywhere. And certainly I&#8217;m pretty happy with the stuff we&#8217;re getting done&#8212;which ends up being both practical and fundamental. I don&#8217;t know so much about the academic mathematical computation scene. But I&#8217;m a bit surprised you ask about funding. I think Mathematica has really opened up the market for mathematical computation&#8212;and there is starting to be a fair number of people and groups who make their living quite well from distributing Mathematica packages. And there&#8217;s certainly room for more of that kind of thing&#8212;quite independent of begging for money from governments and the like.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Well, I think Wolfram Research has one of the largest&#8212;if not the largest&#8212;R&#038;D efforts in mathematical computation anywhere. And certainly I&#8217;m pretty happy with the stuff we&#8217;re getting done&#8212;which ends up being both practical and fundamental. I don&#8217;t know so much about the academic mathematical computation scene. But I&#8217;m a bit surprised you ask about funding. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Well, I think Wolfram Research has one of the largest—if not the largest—R&D efforts in mathematical computation anywhere. And certainly I’m pretty happy with the stuff we’re getting done—which ends up being both practical and fundamental. I don’t know so much about the academic mathematical computation scene. But I’m a bit surprised you ask about funding. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="mathematics" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=mathematics">Mathematics</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1996-06-01 23:01:42"> <p class="date">June 1, 1996</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/interview-stephen-wolfram-euromath-bulletin/'>Interview by Stephen Collart, <em>Euromath Bulletin</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1996/06/01/lisp-was-built-on-the-tradition-of-the-lambda-calculus-when-prolog-became-popular-a-good-dozen-years-ago-it-also-spawned-a-flurry-of-research-into-the-semantics-of-logic-programming-the-evaluation/">Lisp was built on the tradition of the lambda calculus. When Prolog became popular a good dozen years ago, it also spawned a flurry of research into the semantics of logic programming. The evaluation model of Mathematica as a programming language is at least as complex and interesting: why has there been no comparable interest?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>I&#8217;ve wondered that myself. There has been some work, but there could certainly be much more. Perhaps it&#8217;s another sign of the decay of academic computer science. After all, thinking about evaluation models is intellectually quite difficult, especially when there&#8217;s a real system out there to stop people being able to hide in pure formalism. But I think there are some really interesting questions to address about evaluation. There are a few people in my company who study it, but I wish more people would work on it.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="I&#8217;ve wondered that myself. There has been some work, but there could certainly be much more. Perhaps it&#8217;s another sign of the decay of academic computer science. After all, thinking about evaluation models is intellectually quite difficult, especially when there&#8217;s a real system out there to stop people being able to hide in pure formalism. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> I’ve wondered that myself. There has been some work, but there could certainly be much more. Perhaps it’s another sign of the decay of academic computer science. After all, thinking about evaluation models is intellectually quite difficult, especially when there’s a real system out there to stop people being able to hide in pure formalism. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project business wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1996-09-30 15:02:31"> <p class="date">September 30, 1996</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/math-genius-who-decided-not-play-numbers/">Interview by Robers Lee Hotz, <em>Los Angeles Times</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1996/09/30/what-is-more-important-to-you-the-technical-elegance-of-the-mathematica-program-or-the-financial-rewards-it-brings-2/">What is more important to you—the technical elegance of the Mathematica program or the financial rewards it brings?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>In the world of high-tech industry, the money becomes the main point for a lot of people. Take your company, puff it up a bit, take it public, cash out, retire. And then what? I have kept my company private and intend to continue doing that because what I am really interested in is the long-term intellectual achievement that our product represents.</p> <p>The Mathematica system and the language it embodies will be around as long as I am. I think it will be a continuing fixture in the intellectual landscape. That is important to me.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="In the world of high-tech industry, the money becomes the main point for a lot of people. Take your company, puff it up a bit, take it public, cash out, retire. And then what? I have kept my company private and intend to continue doing that because what I am really interested in is the long-term intellectual achievement that our product represents. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> In the world of high-tech industry, the money becomes the main point for a lot of people. Take your company, puff it up a bit, take it public, cash out, retire. And then what? I have kept my company private and intend to continue doing that because what I am really interested in is the long-term intellectual achievement that our product represents. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="business" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=business">Business</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1996-09-30 17:30:20"> <p class="date">September 30, 1996</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/math-genius-who-decided-not-play-numbers/">Interview by Robers Lee Hotz, <em>Los Angeles Times</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1996/09/30/you-started-your-design-of-mathematica-where-most-software-developers-end-theirs-by-writing-a-1395-page-users-manual-why/">You started your design of Mathematica where most software developers end theirs—by writing a 1,395-page users’ manual. Why?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>If you can&#8217;t explain it honestly in the manual, then you are probably making a mistake in the way it is designed and people will never be able to understand how it is ever going to work.</p> <p>One of the things I found to be the most intellectually demanding in building big systems like Mathematica is this whole thing of starting from nothing and then having to build some kind of language and some kind of structure that a lot of people are going to live inside. Can you set that up in a way that is intuitive for people?</p> <p>If it was built in the way people traditionally think of building applications programs, people would never be able to use it in practice. It would be this huge mass of disorganized, incoherent features. Without some kind of overarching set of principles, your pieces would never fit together.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="If you can&#8217;t explain it honestly in the manual, then you are probably making a mistake in the way it is designed and people will never be able to understand how it is ever going to work. One of the things I found to be the most intellectually demanding in building big systems like Mathematica is this whole thing of starting from nothing and then having to build some kind of language and some kind of structure that a lot of people are going to live inside. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> If you can’t explain it honestly in the manual, then you are probably making a mistake in the way it is designed and people will never be able to understand how it is ever going to work. One of the things I found to be the most intellectually demanding in building big systems like Mathematica is this whole thing of starting from nothing and then having to build some kind of language and some kind of structure that a lot of people are going to live inside. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project business wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="1996-09-30 21:24:40"> <p class="date">September 30, 1996</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/math-genius-who-decided-not-play-numbers/">Interview by Robers Lee Hotz, <em>Los Angeles Times</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/1996/09/30/what-would-you-consider-your-most-serious-mistake-running-wolfram-research/">What would you consider your most serious mistake running Wolfram Research?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Part of our market is selling to universities&mdash;maybe 25% of our revenues. When Mathematica first came out, academics were used to the idea that any software they cared about was free&mdash;at least to them.</p> <p>I thought there was a serious market for Mathematica in the academic market. We had to dig in our heels and say this is going to cost you real money. People got very upset about that. To this day, people keep saying: &#8220;You guys charge too much and are so difficult for universities to work with&#8221;.</p> <p>It might have been smarter for us to start off with the lower price we ended up with, rather than digging our heels in so firmly.</p> <p>It was hard to know. We were creating a new kind of market for software. We didn&#8217;t know the rules, and they didn&#8217;t know the rules either.</p> <p>I was worried that if we started with lower prices we would have some downward spiral where it would end up at zero.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Part of our market is selling to universities&mdash;maybe 25% of our revenues. When Mathematica first came out, academics were used to the idea that any software they cared about was free&mdash;at least to them. I thought there was a serious market for Mathematica in the academic market. We had to dig in our heels and say this is going to cost you real money. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Part of our market is selling to universities—maybe 25% of our revenues. When Mathematica first came out, academics were used to the idea that any software they cared about was free—at least to them. I thought there was a serious market for Mathematica in the academic market. We had to dig in our heels and say this is going to cost you real money. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="business" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=business">Business</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2009-05-29 20:02:43"> <p class="date">May 29, 2009</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/sundayprofile/stephen-wolfram-computer-whiz/3133308' target='_blank'>Interview by Monica Attard, ABC Local</a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2009/05/29/is-wolframalpha-another-google-a-simple-search-engine-or-is-it-like-a-vast-encyclopedia-of-sorts/">Is Wolfram|Alpha another Google, a simple search engine? Or is it like a vast encyclopedia of sorts?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>When you look up a term in the encyclopedia, you still have to go and read the paragraph about that term and you have to make sort of your own conclusions from the narrative text that&#8217;s written there.</p> <p>The idea of Wolfram|Alpha is you have a specific question, you know: where will the Sun be at, you know, 12:44pm today, or something. You can ask that specific question, Wolfram|Alpha will go and compute for you the specific answer and just tell you the results, it won&#8217;t be saying, go read this and now go figure out something for yourself. It&#8217;s trying to actually specifically answer a specific question that you would have.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="When you look up a term in the encyclopedia, you still have to go and read the paragraph about that term and you have to make sort of your own conclusions from the narrative text that&#8217;s written there. The idea of Wolfram|Alpha is you have a specific question, you know: where will the Sun be at, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> When you look up a term in the encyclopedia, you still have to go and read the paragraph about that term and you have to make sort of your own conclusions from the narrative text that’s written there. The idea of Wolfram|Alpha is you have a specific question, you know: where will the Sun be at, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2009-05-29 21:11:23"> <p class="date">May 29, 2009</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/sundayprofile/stephen-wolfram-computer-whiz/3133308' target='_blank'>Interview by Monica Attard, ABC Local</a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2009/05/29/how-important-is-it-to-you-to-identify-sources-on-wolframalpha/">How important is it to you to identify sources on Wolfram|Alpha?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Well, I think our approach as you&#8217;re alluding to, it&#8217;s rather different from a search engine. A search engine is just saying, look we as the search engine, we&#8217;re not making any judgments about any of this information&mdash;we&#8217;re just giving you&#8230; you know, here are 10 links that you can go read and make your own judgment about them. You know, we&#8217;ll use some algorithms to try and decide which link should be above which other link. But you&#8217;re kind of on your own, it&#8217;s like we&#8217;re not going to answer your question, we&#8217;re just going to tell you go read these things and you should be able to find the answer there.</p> <p>We&#8217;re doing something in a sense much more outrageous and ambitious in a sense, which is to say, &#8220;Look, we&#8217;re going to try and really take responsibility for the information in the system, we&#8217;re going to try and curate it all, kind of organize it, set it up so that we can actually give you a specific answer to your question, and we&#8217;re going to take responsibility for all of this&#8221;.</p> <p>One of the things that&#8217;s challenging is most of the things that you get from Wolfram|Alpha didn&#8217;t just come&mdash;weren&#8217;t just sort of plucked out of a database. They came from taking three or four different pieces of information, you know, computing a result based on combining different numbers and things like this. Maybe doing something simple like converting units, maybe doing something more complicated like interpolating data, these types of things.</p> <p>So it&#8217;s not really a thing where you can just say we got it from here, you know, this is the reference. It ends up going through a quite complicated process and system for us, so that we end up really having to take full responsibility for what comes out. It&#8217;s very scary because there are ten trillion numbers in Wolfram|Alpha, and a thing that upsets me greatly&mdash;but it doesn&#8217;t stop me doing the project&mdash;is that I know some of those numbers are wrong, and the challenge is just to get as many of them right as possible, and the really great thing that&#8217;s happened just in the past week really is now that Wolfram|Alpha is live in the world, we&#8217;re discovering that a lot of people out there really want to help make this effort succeed and are telling us, you know, this thing is wrong, that number needs to be updated, etc. It&#8217;s really a very nice kind of cooperative process.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Well, I think our approach as you&#8217;re alluding to, it&#8217;s rather different from a search engine. A search engine is just saying, look we as the search engine, we&#8217;re not making any judgments about any of this information&mdash;we&#8217;re just giving you&#8230; you know, here are 10 links that you can go read and make your own judgment about them. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Well, I think our approach as you’re alluding to, it’s rather different from a search engine. A search engine is just saying, look we as the search engine, we’re not making any judgments about any of this information—we’re just giving you… you know, here are 10 links that you can go read and make your own judgment about them. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2009-05-29 21:16:41"> <p class="date">May 29, 2009</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/sundayprofile/stephen-wolfram-computer-whiz/3133308' target='_blank'>Interview by Monica Attard, ABC Local</a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2009/05/29/how-do-you-access-all-those-repositories-of-knowledge-that-you-use-in-wolframalpha/">How do you access all those repositories of knowledge that you use in Wolfram|Alpha?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>It&#8217;s been lots of work. I mean we had a foundation which was, in terms of the algorithmic side of things, had a system called Mathematica which we&#8217;ve been building and selling out there in the world for 23 years now. And that&#8217;s the platform from which Wolfram|Alpha is built.</p> <p>In terms of the actual raw data about the real world, so to speak, yes, we&#8217;re going to lots and lots of different sources, many of them are kind of real-time data feeds and so on that come into our computer systems. The main thing we&#8217;ve been able to do is we built a kind of a pipeline, a kind of an almost-industrial process for taking outside data from different sources and being able to organise it, automatically validate it, use statistical methods and visualisations and so on to see which of these pieces of data are likely to be questionable and so on. And then kind of putting human experts into the pipeline, letting people who really know different domains of data tell us things about what&#8217;s reliable, what&#8217;s not, how one should combine things and so on.</p> <p>I mean this is a lot of work and there&#8217;s a lot more work that we need to do along these lines of ingesting all these different sources of data and setting them up so that they can really be&#8230; they&#8217;re really organized enough to be computable with.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="It&#8217;s been lots of work. I mean we had a foundation which was, in terms of the algorithmic side of things, had a system called Mathematica which we&#8217;ve been building and selling out there in the world for 23 years now. And that&#8217;s the platform from which Wolfram|Alpha is built. In terms of the actual raw data about the real world, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> It’s been lots of work. I mean we had a foundation which was, in terms of the algorithmic side of things, had a system called Mathematica which we’ve been building and selling out there in the world for 23 years now. And that’s the platform from which Wolfram|Alpha is built. In terms of the actual raw data about the real world, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2009-05-29 21:20:40"> <p class="date">May 29, 2009</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/sundayprofile/stephen-wolfram-computer-whiz/3133308' target='_blank'>Interview by Monica Attard, ABC Local</a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2009/05/29/google-is-planning-to-launch-a-similar-service-to-wolframalpha-called-google-squared-do-you-see-it-as-similar/">Google is planning to launch a similar service to Wolfram|Alpha called Google Squared. Do you see it as similar?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>I don&#8217;t really know enough about it. I mean, I think that what we&#8217;ve been doing here is a much more insanely ambitious project than I think anybody else really could seriously imagine at this point. I don&#8217;t really know about the details, but the general search engine concept tends to be you&#8217;re foraging information from the web and kind of using some purely automated algorithm to present that foraged information in some useful way. And that&#8217;s great for many purposes, you know; I use search engines all the time.</p> <p>What we are doing is something that in a sense uses humans a lot more because we&#8217;re trying to take the knowledge of the world, as it&#8217;s been accumulated by humans, and sort of make use of that knowledge and that expertise to kind of build something that can compute answers to questions.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="I don&#8217;t really know enough about it. I mean, I think that what we&#8217;ve been doing here is a much more insanely ambitious project than I think anybody else really could seriously imagine at this point. I don&#8217;t really know about the details, but the general search engine concept tends to be you&#8217;re foraging information from the web and kind of using some purely automated algorithm to present that foraged information in some useful way. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> I don’t really know enough about it. I mean, I think that what we’ve been doing here is a much more insanely ambitious project than I think anybody else really could seriously imagine at this point. I don’t really know about the details, but the general search engine concept tends to be you’re foraging information from the web and kind of using some purely automated algorithm to present that foraged information in some useful way. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2009-08-31 17:23:28"> <p class="date">August 31, 2009</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.crazyengineers.com/threads/dr-stephen-wolfram-wolframalpha-mathematica-a-new-kind-of-science.62790' target='_blank'>Interview by Kaustubh Katdare, <em>CrazyEngineers</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2009/08/31/could-you-give-a-brief-overview-of-the-algorithms-that-make-wolframalpha-work-and-produce-great-results/">Could you give a brief overview of the algorithms that make Wolfram|Alpha work and produce great results?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>It&#8217;s a big system! These days about 6 million lines of Mathematica code. It relies on a very large number of different algorithms and methods, a large fraction of which we&#8217;ve had to invent. In a sense it&#8217;s NKS that makes it possible: the paradigmatic idea that there can be fairly simple underlying programs that produce the rich and complex behavior we need. And actually, we use NKS methods quite a lot to find actual algorithms to use in Wolfram|Alpha.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="It&#8217;s a big system! These days about 6 million lines of Mathematica code. It relies on a very large number of different algorithms and methods, a large fraction of which we&#8217;ve had to invent. In a sense it&#8217;s NKS that makes it possible: the paradigmatic idea that there can be fairly simple underlying programs that produce the rich and complex behavior we need. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> It’s a big system! These days about 6 million lines of Mathematica code. It relies on a very large number of different algorithms and methods, a large fraction of which we’ve had to invent. In a sense it’s NKS that makes it possible: the paradigmatic idea that there can be fairly simple underlying programs that produce the rich and complex behavior we need. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2009-08-31 17:26:38"> <p class="date">August 31, 2009</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.crazyengineers.com/threads/dr-stephen-wolfram-wolframalpha-mathematica-a-new-kind-of-science.62790' target='_blank'>Interview by Kaustubh Katdare, <em>CrazyEngineers</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2009/08/31/where-does-wolframalpha-get-all-its-data-does-it-crawl-the-internet-like-web-search-engines/">Where does Wolfram|Alpha get all its data? Does it crawl the Internet like web search engines?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>We try to get data from the most definitive, authoritative, sources. Often the web is a good place to start in helping us identify those sources. But then we tend to go to them directly. Identifying the best sources is just the first step, though. Then we have to curate the data, organizing it, correlating it, validating it. It always ends up needing lots of automated work, with statistical analysis, visualization, etc. Together with input from actual human experts in each particular domain.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="We try to get data from the most definitive, authoritative, sources. Often the web is a good place to start in helping us identify those sources. But then we tend to go to them directly. Identifying the best sources is just the first step, though. Then we have to curate the data, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> We try to get data from the most definitive, authoritative, sources. Often the web is a good place to start in helping us identify those sources. But then we tend to go to them directly. Identifying the best sources is just the first step, though. Then we have to curate the data, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project future-perspectives wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2009-08-31 21:48:08"> <p class="date">August 31, 2009</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.crazyengineers.com/threads/dr-stephen-wolfram-wolframalpha-mathematica-a-new-kind-of-science.62790' target='_blank'>Interview by Kaustubh Katdare, <em>CrazyEngineers</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2009/08/31/what-kind-of-problems-can-we-attempt-to-solve-in-the-future-using-mathematica/">What kind of problems can we attempt to solve in the future using Mathematica?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Anything that can be made computational! There&#8217;s a huge knowledgebase of algorithms and data now in Mathematica. And the symbolic programming paradigm that underlies Mathematica has turned out to be incredibly general and powerful. It&#8217;s really fun for me to see how incredibly productive people who know Mathematica well can be. They seem to be able to solve pretty much any kind of computational problem with it&mdash;very fast.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Anything that can be made computational! There&#8217;s a huge knowledgebase of algorithms and data now in Mathematica. And the symbolic programming paradigm that underlies Mathematica has turned out to be incredibly general and powerful. It&#8217;s really fun for me to see how incredibly productive people who know Mathematica well can be. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Anything that can be made computational! There’s a huge knowledgebase of algorithms and data now in Mathematica. And the symbolic programming paradigm that underlies Mathematica has turned out to be incredibly general and powerful. It’s really fun for me to see how incredibly productive people who know Mathematica well can be. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="future-perspectives" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=future-perspectives">Future Perspectives</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2009-08-31 21:49:50"> <p class="date">August 31, 2009</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.crazyengineers.com/threads/dr-stephen-wolfram-wolframalpha-mathematica-a-new-kind-of-science.62790' target='_blank'>Interview by Kaustubh Katdare, <em>CrazyEngineers</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2009/08/31/how-did-you-go-about-building-wolframalpha-what-were-the-design-challenges-and-architecture-of-wolframalpha/">How did you go about building Wolfram|Alpha? What were the design challenges and architecture of Wolfram|Alpha?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>It&#8217;s a complicated project. Certainly it has many more &#8220;moving parts&#8221; than anything I&#8217;ve ever tried to do before. There&#8217;s the data side of it: building a pipeline to organize and expertly curate data from all different domains. Then there&#8217;s implementing all the methods and models that we know from science and other fields. Then there&#8217;s doing linguistic processing to understand people&#8217;s inputs. And then there&#8217;s automatically presenting results, creating tabulations and visualizations and so on. We&#8217;ve invented a lot of new approaches, both technological and organizational, to make it all work.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="It&#8217;s a complicated project. Certainly it has many more &#8220;moving parts&#8221; than anything I&#8217;ve ever tried to do before. There&#8217;s the data side of it: building a pipeline to organize and expertly curate data from all different domains. Then there&#8217;s implementing all the methods and models that we know from science and other fields. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> It’s a complicated project. Certainly it has many more “moving parts” than anything I’ve ever tried to do before. There’s the data side of it: building a pipeline to organize and expertly curate data from all different domains. Then there’s implementing all the methods and models that we know from science and other fields. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2009-08-31 21:54:36"> <p class="date">August 31, 2009</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.crazyengineers.com/threads/dr-stephen-wolfram-wolframalpha-mathematica-a-new-kind-of-science.62790' target='_blank'>Interview by Kaustubh Katdare, <em>CrazyEngineers</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2009/08/31/what-kind-of-infrastructure-do-you-have-to-process-all-the-data-in-wolframalpha/">What kind of infrastructure do you have to process all the data in Wolfram|Alpha?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>We have several supercomputer-class clusters running Wolfram|Alpha. All of the code of Wolfram|Alpha is written in Mathematica. When you give an input, it gets handled by webMathematica, then parallelized through a version of gridMathematica.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="We have several supercomputer-class clusters running Wolfram|Alpha. All of the code of Wolfram|Alpha is written in Mathematica. When you give an input, it gets handled by webMathematica, then parallelized through a version of gridMathematica."> We have several supercomputer-class clusters running Wolfram|Alpha. All of the code of Wolfram|Alpha is written in Mathematica. When you give an input, it gets handled by webMathematica, then parallelized through a version of gridMathematica. </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2010-01-05 17:42:33"> <p class="date">January 5, 2010</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://xconomy.com/seattle/2010/01/05/stephen-wolfram-talks-bing-partnership-software-strategy-and-the-future-of-knowledge-computing/' target='_blank'>Interview by Gregory T. Huang, <em>Xconomy</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2010/01/05/from-a-technology-standpoint-whats-next-for-wolframalpha/">From a technology standpoint, what’s next for Wolfram|Alpha?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>In Wolfram|Alpha, a lot of what it works out is &#8220;old science&#8221; based. There is an existing model for such and such economic process [for example]. These models are based on equations and mathematical kinds of things. But can we not only compute on the fly, can we also invent and create on the fly? That brings us into the world of searching programs and NKS. I simply don&#8217;t know if today&#8217;s computers are fast enough to pull this off in a useful way. We have created musical forms using this, and it has been picked up by serious composers. But there are lots of domains. Until you try it, you really don&#8217;t know. There&#8217;s a tremendous range of applications and lots of different business directions. My priority right now is trying to ramp up our business.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="In Wolfram|Alpha, a lot of what it works out is &#8220;old science&#8221; based. There is an existing model for such and such economic process [for example]. These models are based on equations and mathematical kinds of things. But can we not only compute on the fly, can we also invent and create on the fly? <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> In Wolfram|Alpha, a lot of what it works out is “old science” based. There is an existing model for such and such economic process [for example]. These models are based on equations and mathematical kinds of things. But can we not only compute on the fly, can we also invent and create on the fly? <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2010-01-05 17:48:22"> <p class="date">January 5, 2010</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://xconomy.com/seattle/2010/01/05/stephen-wolfram-talks-bing-partnership-software-strategy-and-the-future-of-knowledge-computing/' target='_blank'>Interview by Gregory T. Huang, <em>Xconomy</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2010/01/05/how-mainstream-will-wolfram-alpha-become-compared-with-search-engines-like-google-or-bing/">How mainstream will Wolfram|Alpha become, compared with search engines like Google or Bing?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>These are complementary kinds of things. It&#8217;s like asking, how successful is science going to be in the world? It&#8217;s saying, what can you compute in the world? How could search engines become so important? When it becomes sufficiently easy to be a reference librarian hundreds of times a day.</p> <p>I think the set of people for whom Wolfram|Alpha is useful is very broad. It&#8217;s a sobering comment on the human condition what people are actually typing in [to search engines]. We don&#8217;t see the porn, the celebrity gossip, but we do see lots of stuff where people try to figure out, in a machine shop, what size of drill should they use to make a hole of a certain size. Or how far is it from here to there, or how does this compare to that.</p> <p>I expect in time, the things we&#8217;re doing will become commonplace. My children are playing with Wolfram|Alpha; it&#8217;s trivial to find out things. Gradually, they become well absorbed into the culture, and things become assumed. Even with NKS, in a different direction, I wrote in the preface, all these things that when the book comes out will seem shocking, in time will seem completely obvious and commonplace.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="These are complementary kinds of things. It&#8217;s like asking, how successful is science going to be in the world? It&#8217;s saying, what can you compute in the world? How could search engines become so important? When it becomes sufficiently easy to be a reference librarian hundreds of times a day. I think the set of people for whom Wolfram|Alpha is useful is very broad. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> These are complementary kinds of things. It’s like asking, how successful is science going to be in the world? It’s saying, what can you compute in the world? How could search engines become so important? When it becomes sufficiently easy to be a reference librarian hundreds of times a day. I think the set of people for whom Wolfram|Alpha is useful is very broad. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project science wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2010-01-05 17:51:51"> <p class="date">January 5, 2010</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://xconomy.com/seattle/2010/01/05/stephen-wolfram-talks-bing-partnership-software-strategy-and-the-future-of-knowledge-computing/' target='_blank'>Interview by Gregory T. Huang, <em>Xconomy</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2010/01/05/are-physicists-at-the-large-hadron-collider-lhc-using-your-computational-techniques/">Are physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) using your computational techniques?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>There&#8217;s a lot of Mathematica usage. I&#8217;d expect LHC people would use [NKS] on their laptops for searching the space of models. It&#8217;s for the future of NKS to figure out if something bizarre is seen at LHC.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="There&#8217;s a lot of Mathematica usage. I&#8217;d expect LHC people would use [NKS] on their laptops for searching the space of models. It&#8217;s for the future of NKS to figure out if something bizarre is seen at LHC."> There’s a lot of Mathematica usage. I’d expect LHC people would use [NKS] on their laptops for searching the space of models. It’s for the future of NKS to figure out if something bizarre is seen at LHC. </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="science" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=science">Science</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2011-11-03 15:58:56"> <p class="date">November 3, 2011</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-11/eleven-thousand-words-stephen-wolfram/' target='_blank'>Interview by Mark Jannot, <em>Popular Science</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2011/11/03/is-it-fair-to-say-that-the-fundamental-aim-of-wolframalpha-is-to-foster-and-democratize-computational-knowledge/">Is it fair to say that the fundamental aim of Wolfram|Alpha is to foster and democratize computational knowledge?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>That&#8217;s what we&#8217;re trying to do. That&#8217;s the big effort. That&#8217;s the thing: Absent these various realizations, one might have thought that with computational knowledge, we&#8217;ll really not be able to get very far; it&#8217;s very specialized and won&#8217;t be able to be generally useful. And for me, that&#8217;s the big metadiscovery of the past two years: that at this time in history, it&#8217;s actually possible to do this. I don&#8217;t think it will get progressively easier to do it&mdash;there&#8217;s not going to be a dramatic moment when it gets much easier&mdash;but it sort of came over the horizon, it became possible, and it will gradually get easier. But this is the time.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="That&#8217;s what we&#8217;re trying to do. That&#8217;s the big effort. That&#8217;s the thing: Absent these various realizations, one might have thought that with computational knowledge, we&#8217;ll really not be able to get very far; it&#8217;s very specialized and won&#8217;t be able to be generally useful. And for me, that&#8217;s the big metadiscovery of the past two years: that at this time in history, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> That’s what we’re trying to do. That’s the big effort. That’s the thing: Absent these various realizations, one might have thought that with computational knowledge, we’ll really not be able to get very far; it’s very specialized and won’t be able to be generally useful. And for me, that’s the big metadiscovery of the past two years: that at this time in history, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2011-11-03 22:24:54"> <p class="date">November 3, 2011</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-11/eleven-thousand-words-stephen-wolfram/' target='_blank'>Interview by Mark Jannot, <em>Popular Science</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2011/11/03/the-notion-that-all-of-our-exponential-growth-curves-in-data-gathering-storage-and-processing-ability-have-delivered-us-to-a-real-paradigm-shift-moment-in-terms-of-how-data-can-both-help-us-to-unders/">The notion that all of our exponential growth curves in data gathering, storage and processing ability have delivered us to a real paradigm-shift moment in terms of how data can both help us to understand our world and to change it. Do you agree with that? And how does that dovetail with your own work with data and computation?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>There are several different branches here. Let&#8217;s start with, when you say data, what are the sources of data in the world today? One source of data is people compiling data&mdash;census data, data on properties of chemicals. This is largely human-compiled data. What has happened today is that there are very large data repositories in lots of different areas. Many of them were started 30 years ago, and they&#8217;ve been just gradually building up, building up. Those data repositories were made possible originally by the existence of at first mainframe and then later generations of computers. That&#8217;s what got lots of people really launched on being able to create those data repositories. So source number-one for data is the human aggregation of data. Another source of data, which is just coming online in a big way, is sensor data. At this point, there&#8217;s some kind of public sensor data, whether it&#8217;s seismometers from around the world or whether it&#8217;s traffic-flow sensors, lots of much more private sensor-based data that people use for their own purposes. That&#8217;s leading to a huge torrent of quite homogeneous data. It&#8217;s &#8220;the level of this river as a function of time, every minute for the past however long&#8221;.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="There are several different branches here. Let&#8217;s start with, when you say data, what are the sources of data in the world today? One source of data is people compiling data&mdash;census data, data on properties of chemicals. This is largely human-compiled data. What has happened today is that there are very large data repositories in lots of different areas. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> There are several different branches here. Let’s start with, when you say data, what are the sources of data in the world today? One source of data is people compiling data—census data, data on properties of chemicals. This is largely human-compiled data. What has happened today is that there are very large data repositories in lots of different areas. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2012-05-14 16:35:26"> <p class="date">May 14, 2012</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/tmutz/stephen_wolfram_nks_10th_anniversary/c4nyzl9/' target='_blank'>Reddit AMA</a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2012/05/14/mathematica-nks-wolframalpha-what-comes-next-how-are-they-all-related-and-what-is-your-criteria-for-choosing-a-project/">Mathematica, NKS, Wolfram|Alpha, what comes next? How are they all related and what is your criteria for choosing a project?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>First, lots of combinations of those. There are some really interesting things emerging there.</p> <p>I&#8217;m hoping one day to make a serious assault on finding the fundamental theory of physics. Perhaps that will be my next &#8220;very different&#8221; project.</p> <p>How are all my projects connected? Well they all have in common that they involve taking some big hairy area and trying to break it down to find what&#8217;s essential, and then building up from there.</p> <p>And each project required the previous one in order to be possible. NKS relied on Mathematica as a tool. Wolfram|Alpha I only realized was possible after what I discovered in NKS. And of course Wolfram|Alpha is all built in Mathematica.</p> <p>About picking projects: I always have a supply of projects that I&#8217;m thinking about. Typically I gradually accumulate ideas about them. And wait for the right time&#8212;given ambient technology, the state of the world, my situation, etc.&#8212;to do them.</p> <p>One feature of all my projects is that they&#8217;re never really done. They&#8217;re infinite projects (well, with NKS at least the book got simply &#8220;done&#8221;&#8230; 10 years ago today). And an important thing for me is to develop an organization that can keep moving each project forward, without me having to spend all my time on it. Because without that, I&#8217;d never be able to do a new project, ever.</p> <p>What are my criteria for a &#8220;good&#8221; project? It must be something that I find intellectually really interesting and that I expect to make use of for the rest of my life. It must be something that I think nobody else will do, and that for some reason I and our organization are uniquely positioned to do. Oh, and it mustn&#8217;t take too long (as in, there should be something to show for it within a few years). For many projects, it also has to have some way to make business sense, so I can afford to build up a team around it, etc.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="First, lots of combinations of those. There are some really interesting things emerging there. I&#8217;m hoping one day to make a serious assault on finding the fundamental theory of physics. Perhaps that will be my next &#8220;very different&#8221; project. How are all my projects connected? Well they all have in common that they involve taking some big hairy area and trying to break it down to find what&#8217;s essential, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> First, lots of combinations of those. There are some really interesting things emerging there. I’m hoping one day to make a serious assault on finding the fundamental theory of physics. Perhaps that will be my next “very different” project. How are all my projects connected? Well they all have in common that they involve taking some big hairy area and trying to break it down to find what’s essential, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project education wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2016-02-23 14:56:12"> <p class="date">February 23, 2016</p> <p class="asker">From: <A href='https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/478njk/im_stephen_wolframask_me_anything/d0bbk51/' target='_blank'>Reddit AMA</a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2016/02/23/what-ages-are-appropriate-to-learn-wolfram-language-do-you-see-wolfram-language-in-third-world-countries-like-an-open-source-platform-in-the-future/">What ages are appropriate to learn Wolfram Language? Do you see Wolfram Language in third world countries like an Open Source platform in the future?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>My theory has been that age 12 is where Wolfram Language starts to be the right thing to learn. But I&#8217;ve now seen a good number of 9-, 10- and 11-year-olds who seem to be having a great time with it, so at least for some kids I have to revise my estimate down.</p> <p>Still younger kids can certainly get a lot out of using specific Wolfram Language Demonstrations e.g. from (<a href='https://demonstrations.wolfram.com'>https://demonstrations.wolfram.com</a>) but I think &#8220;raw coding&#8221; may be too difficult for now. I&#8217;m interested in thinking about what to do with this age group. We&#8217;ve been working with the Scratch team on &#8220;Wolfram Blocks&#8221; for Scratch, but I think there are some more ideas to have there. (For our Demonstrations project, there&#8217;s actually a list of K, 1,&#8230; Demonstrations in <a href='https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/ccss-explore.html'>https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/ccss-explore.html</a>)</p> <p>We now have Wolfram Programming Lab available free on the web, at <a href='https://www.wolfram.com/programming-lab/'>https://www.wolfram.com/programming-lab/</a>, and I&#8217;m definitely hoping there&#8217;ll be lots of kids, including from developing countries, who can use it. We also have quite a few projects around the world aimed at introducing the Wolfram Language to kids in developing countries. On a large scale, the challenge is typically teaching the teachers&#8230; and finding good partners to do that with.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="My theory has been that age 12 is where Wolfram Language starts to be the right thing to learn. But I&#8217;ve now seen a good number of 9-, 10- and 11-year-olds who seem to be having a great time with it, so at least for some kids I have to revise my estimate down. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> My theory has been that age 12 is where Wolfram Language starts to be the right thing to learn. But I’ve now seen a good number of 9-, 10- and 11-year-olds who seem to be having a great time with it, so at least for some kids I have to revise my estimate down. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="education" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=education">Education</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project artificial-intelligence wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2016-02-23 16:28:48"> <p class="date">February 23, 2016</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/478njk/im_stephen_wolframask_me_anything/d0b2hm6/' target='_blank'>Reddit AMA</a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2016/02/23/what-do-you-think-of-the-current-deep-learning-methods-will-that-fit-into-wolfram-software/">What do you think of the current “deep learning” methods? Will that fit into Wolfram software?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Yes, we&#8217;ve done a lot with these things, and will be doing a lot more. See e.g. <a href='https://www.imageidentify.com'>https://www.imageidentify.com</a> that we released a year ago. We&#8217;ve also got a lot of machine learning built directly into the Wolfram Language (and we use machine learning to automate it, so you don&#8217;t need machine-learning experts to use it).</p> <p>For me it&#8217;s been really interesting to see the trajectory of neural networks. I worked on them back around 1980, and I really couldn&#8217;t get them to do anything interesting. I wasn&#8217;t sure they would ever do interesting things. But it turns out that&#8212;using essentially just the kinds of things I was doing back in 1980&#8212;we finally can make them do interesting things. It&#8217;s all a very interesting episode in the history of science and technology. (See e.g. <a href='https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2015/05/wolfram-language-artificial-intelligence-the-image-identification-project/'>https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2015/05/wolfram-language-artificial-intelligence-the-image-identification-project/</a>)</p> <p>And being able to have this kind of functionality alongside all our precise symbolic computational capabilities in the Wolfram Language is extremely powerful&#8212;and I expect lots more from it in the future.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Yes, we&#8217;ve done a lot with these things, and will be doing a lot more. See e.g. <a href='https://www.imageidentify.com'>https://www.imageidentify.com</a> that we released a year ago. We&#8217;ve also got a lot of machine learning built directly into the Wolfram Language (and we use machine learning to automate it, so you don&#8217;t need machine-learning experts to use it). <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Yes, we’ve done a lot with these things, and will be doing a lot more. See e.g. <a href='https://www.imageidentify.com'>https://www.imageidentify.com</a> that we released a year ago. We’ve also got a lot of machine learning built directly into the Wolfram Language (and we use machine learning to automate it, so you don’t need machine-learning experts to use it). <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="artificial-intelligence" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=artificial-intelligence">Artificial Intelligence</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project personal-history wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2016-07-20 22:57:43"> <p class="date">July 20, 2016</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4tspts/im_stephen_wolframask_me_anything/d5jz1i8/' target='_blank'>Reddit AMA</a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2016/07/20/you-have-an-uncommon-experience-of-being-and-being-around-many-prominent-figures-in-the-scientific-community-how-has-this-influenced-the-development-of-the-wolfram-language/">You have an uncommon experience of being (and being around) many prominent figures in the scientific community. How has this influenced the development of the Wolfram Language?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Designing a language that&#8217;s supposed to &#8220;know about everything&#8221; means one has to know about a lot of things oneself! It&#8217;s been absolutely crucial that I&#8217;ve been exposed to lots of different areas, and gotten to know the originators of lots of fields. At a practical level, it&#8217;s very common that I&#8217;ll want to get some judgement call on some detailed thing in some particular area. Now our company has a wide range of people who know about all sorts of different things. So my first step is just to think who in our company will know, or to consult our internal Who Knows What database. But then I&#8217;ll wonder who I can ask in the outside world. And it&#8217;s really wonderful being able to talk to experts in any possible field&mdash;and the founders of the field if they&#8217;re still around. I&#8217;ve had some really fascinating conversations that way.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Designing a language that&#8217;s supposed to &#8220;know about everything&#8221; means one has to know about a lot of things oneself! It&#8217;s been absolutely crucial that I&#8217;ve been exposed to lots of different areas, and gotten to know the originators of lots of fields. At a practical level, it&#8217;s very common that I&#8217;ll want to get some judgement call on some detailed thing in some particular area. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Designing a language that’s supposed to “know about everything” means one has to know about a lot of things oneself! It’s been absolutely crucial that I’ve been exposed to lots of different areas, and gotten to know the originators of lots of fields. At a practical level, it’s very common that I’ll want to get some judgement call on some detailed thing in some particular area. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="personal-history" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=personal-history">Personal History</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project historical-perspectives wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2016-07-20 23:00:41"> <p class="date">July 20, 2016</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4tspts/im_stephen_wolframask_me_anything/d5jz1i8/' . target='_blank'>Reddit AMA</a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2016/07/20/are-there-problems-that-were-difficult-to-solve-historically-but-can-now-be-solved-trivially-using-the-wolfram-language-if-so-which-are-your-favorites/">Are there problems that were difficult to solve (historically) but can now be solved trivially using the Wolfram Language? If so, which are your favorites?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>About problems that become easy to solve with the Wolfram Language: yes, lots and lots and lots. People mostly just go and use Mathematica&#8212;or now the Wolfram Language&#8212;to solve problems, and I don&#8217;t hear about what they do. But it&#8217;s amazing how often I&#8217;ll be at some science or technology event and some prominent person will say &#8220;oh, yes, I invented or discovered some big thing using the Wolfram Language&#8221;&#8230; It&#8217;s really encouraging to me to hear these things&#8212;even if it&#8217;s sometimes a decade or more after it happened.</p> <p>In terms of favorite uses: well, I originally started building what&#8217;s now the Wolfram Language so I could use it myself. And I&#8217;m really excited about the things I discovered with it in exploring the computational universe of simple programs&#8212;the stuff I talked about it in my book <em>A New Kind of Science</em>. Really everything there was made possible by what&#8217;s now the Wolfram Language.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="About problems that become easy to solve with the Wolfram Language: yes, lots and lots and lots. People mostly just go and use Mathematica&#8212;or now the Wolfram Language&#8212;to solve problems, and I don&#8217;t hear about what they do. But it&#8217;s amazing how often I&#8217;ll be at some science or technology event and some prominent person will say &#8220;oh, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> About problems that become easy to solve with the Wolfram Language: yes, lots and lots and lots. People mostly just go and use Mathematica—or now the Wolfram Language—to solve problems, and I don’t hear about what they do. But it’s amazing how often I’ll be at some science or technology event and some prominent person will say “oh, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="historical-perspectives" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=historical-perspectives">Historical Perspectives</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2016-11-07 21:18:20"> <p class="date">November 7, 2016</p> <p class="asker">From: Interview by Dingyu Chen, <em>Eton Magazine</em></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2016/11/07/your-products-so-far-have-been-wildly-successful-and-crucial-in-the-lives-of-many-do-you-have-any-plans-for-future-releases/">Your products so far have been wildly successful and crucial in the lives of many. Do you have any plans for future releases?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Of course! In early December you&#8217;ll see Wolfram|Alpha start letting you &#8220;open up the code&#8221; so you can take the Wolfram Language code it uses, and do your own computations with it. That will be important to lots of students, but it&#8217;s just a corner of our R&#038;D efforts. We&#8217;ve been at this for 30 years now, and it&#8217;s exciting to see that a lot of directions we&#8217;ve been pursuing for almost that long are finally coming to fruition, and will lead to some exciting new things in language design, AI, cloud deployment, Internet of Things, etc.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Of course! In early December you&#8217;ll see Wolfram|Alpha start letting you &#8220;open up the code&#8221; so you can take the Wolfram Language code it uses, and do your own computations with it. That will be important to lots of students, but it&#8217;s just a corner of our R&#038;D efforts. We&#8217;ve been at this for 30 years now, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Of course! In early December you’ll see Wolfram|Alpha start letting you “open up the code” so you can take the Wolfram Language code it uses, and do your own computations with it. That will be important to lots of students, but it’s just a corner of our R&D efforts. We’ve been at this for 30 years now, <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project future-perspectives wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2017-03-08 22:28:26"> <p class="date">March 8, 2017</p> <p class="asker">From: Interview by John Horgan, <em>Scientific American</em></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2017/03/08/whats-the-ultimate-purpose-of-the-wolfram-language-can-it-fulfill-leibnizs-dream-of-a-language-that-can-help-us-resolve-all-questions-moral-as-well-as-scientific-can-it-provide-a-means-of-unamb/">What’s the ultimate purpose of the Wolfram Language? Can it fulfill Leibniz’s dream of a language that can help us resolve all questions, moral as well as scientific? Can it provide a means of unambiguous communication between all intelligent entities, whether biological or artificial?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>My goal with the Wolfram Language is to have a language in which computations can conveniently be expressed for both humans and machines&#8212;and in which we&#8217;ve integrated as much knowledge about computation and about the world as possible. In a way, the Wolfram Language is aimed at finally achieving some of the goals Leibniz had 300 years ago. We now know&#8212;as a result of Gödel&#8217;s theorem, computational irreducibility, etc.&#8212;that there are limits to the scientific questions that can be resolved. And as far as moral questions are concerned: well, the Wolfram Language is going in the direction of at least being able to express things like moral principles, but it can&#8217;t invent those; they have to come from humans and human society.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="My goal with the Wolfram Language is to have a language in which computations can conveniently be expressed for both humans and machines&#8212;and in which we&#8217;ve integrated as much knowledge about computation and about the world as possible. In a way, the Wolfram Language is aimed at finally achieving some of the goals Leibniz had 300 years ago. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> My goal with the Wolfram Language is to have a language in which computations can conveniently be expressed for both humans and machines—and in which we’ve integrated as much knowledge about computation and about the world as possible. In a way, the Wolfram Language is aimed at finally achieving some of the goals Leibniz had 300 years ago. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="future-perspectives" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=future-perspectives">Future Perspectives</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project personal-productivity wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2019-03-04 16:38:21"> <p class="date">March 4, 2019</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/axf32h/i_am_stephen_wolfram_founder_ceo_of_wolfram/eht922j/' target='_blank'>Reddit AMA</a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2019/03/04/do-you-use-software-to-keep-track-of-all-or-some-of-the-projects-happening-in-your-company-is-it-really-just-email-threads-do-you-use-a-slack-like-application-do-you-use-something-to-schedule-your/">Do you use software to keep track of all or some of the projects happening in your company? Is it really just email threads? Do you use a slack-like application? Do you use something to schedule your day and/or keep track of what you want to be doing?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>We have a good project management team and system at our company. I think probably the project management culture is the most important part. Different project teams end up using different specific software systems (some use Jira, some use RT, some use homegrown solutions, etc.) We have pretty active RocketChat going on around our company.</p> <p>My scheduling is pretty complicated, and I have to admit that I have a full-time person who just handles that. (It gets complicated, among other things, because we have lots of meetings that involve people in very diverse timezones &#8230; and sometimes meetings go in unexpected directions and we have to quickly find people, etc. Also, sometimes when I&#8217;m working on something I&#8217;ll end up getting on a roll, and don&#8217;t want to derail.) My actual schedule is in a standard iCal calendar (Zimbra+Fantastical2). [I&#8217;m not a huge fan of the current system we have; it&#8217;s hard to believe that in 2019 calendar refreshing is that hard, or that recurring meetings need to have such simple-minded logic.]</p> <p>At least during the week, I tend to have 10–12 hours of completely scheduled time, mostly meetings. I&#8217;ve adopted the methodology of &#8220;thinking in public&#8221;, so most of those meetings are actually creative time, but with other people helping/learning etc.</p> <p>As far as keeping track of what I want to do longer term &#8230; I have lots of Wolfram Notebooks full of ideas and plans, and I organize things with those.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="We have a good project management team and system at our company. I think probably the project management culture is the most important part. Different project teams end up using different specific software systems (some use Jira, some use RT, some use homegrown solutions, etc.) We have pretty active RocketChat going on around our company. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> We have a good project management team and system at our company. I think probably the project management culture is the most important part. Different project teams end up using different specific software systems (some use Jira, some use RT, some use homegrown solutions, etc.) We have pretty active RocketChat going on around our company. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="personal-productivity" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=personal-productivity">Personal Productivity</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project personal-productivity wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2019-03-04 16:40:30"> <p class="date">March 4, 2019</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/axf32h/i_am_stephen_wolfram_founder_ceo_of_wolfram/eht95k6/' target='_blank'>Reddit AMA</a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2019/03/04/you-gather-data-on-your-daily-activities-using-mathematica-as-more-biofeedback-tech-smart-watches-neuro-tech-etc-comes-along-what-will-mathematicas-role-be-in-helping-make-use-of-this-data-in/">You gather data on your daily activities using Mathematica. As more biofeedback tech (smart watches, neuro tech, etc.) comes along what will Mathematica’s role be in helping make use of this data in a meaningful way? Also if I want to make use of a Muse device’s data (EEG data) what would be the best approach for doing so in Mathematica?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Mathematica/WL have been able to import EDF for a long time. EEG is really complicated, though I have to believe that modern machine learning should finally be able to unscramble it better.</p> <p>As far as decoding biofeedback data: ultimately one needs a model for the human to know what it means. And that&#8217;s becoming more realistic, e.g. with our SystemModeler product. There&#8217;s a huge amount that I think can be done with &#8220;sensor-based medicine&#8221;, but it requires a change in the way people think about things like medical diagnosis. When you&#8217;ve got a gigabyte of data, it&#8217;s no longer &#8220;well, do you have A or B?&#8221;. This is a big subject &#8230; there&#8217;s lots more to say about it&#8230;..</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Mathematica/WL have been able to import EDF for a long time. EEG is really complicated, though I have to believe that modern machine learning should finally be able to unscramble it better. As far as decoding biofeedback data: ultimately one needs a model for the human to know what it means. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Mathematica/WL have been able to import EDF for a long time. EEG is really complicated, though I have to believe that modern machine learning should finally be able to unscramble it better. As far as decoding biofeedback data: ultimately one needs a model for the human to know what it means. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="personal-productivity" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=personal-productivity">Personal Productivity</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project just-curious wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2019-07-24 22:13:36"> <p class="date">July 24, 2019</p> <p class="asker">From: Interview by Will Carey, <em>Creative Chair</em></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2019/07/24/could-the-wolfram-code-be-used-to-assign-meaning-to-the-arrival-logograms-effectively-be-used-to-assign-meanings-to-any-shapes/">Could the Wolfram code be used to assign meaning to the <em>Arrival</em> logograms effectively be used to assign meanings to any shapes?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>No&#8212;because there can&#8217;t be a general way to do this. Think about the shapes we see in the natural world. What &#8220;meaning&#8221; do they have? Or think about shapes we see in archaeology. We often don&#8217;t know when they were &#8220;ornamental&#8221;, and when they were &#8220;functional&#8221;. There is no abstract way to associate meaning with a shape. One needs a whole cultural context to be able to do that. I happen to have written about these issues recently in connection with us humans sending artifacts into space: <a href='https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2018/01/showing-off-to-the-universe-beacons-for-the-afterlife-of-our-civilization/'>https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2018/01/showing-off-to-the-universe-beacons-for-the-afterlife-of-our-civilization/</a></p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="No&#8212;because there can&#8217;t be a general way to do this. Think about the shapes we see in the natural world. What &#8220;meaning&#8221; do they have? Or think about shapes we see in archaeology. We often don&#8217;t know when they were &#8220;ornamental&#8221;, and when they were &#8220;functional&#8221;. There is no abstract way to associate meaning with a shape. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> No—because there can’t be a general way to do this. Think about the shapes we see in the natural world. What “meaning” do they have? Or think about shapes we see in archaeology. We often don’t know when they were “ornamental”, and when they were “functional”. There is no abstract way to associate meaning with a shape. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="just-curious" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=just-curious">Just Curious...</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2019-11-04 21:10:26"> <p class="date">November 4, 2019</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://physicsworld.com/a/exploring-the-computational-universe-with-stephen-wolfram/' target='_blank'>Interview by Margaret Harris, <em>Physics World</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2019/11/04/whats-the-rationale-behind-developing-the-wolfram-language/">What’s the rationale behind developing the Wolfram Language?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>The concept of Wolfram Language (which is a direct extension of my original vision for Mathematica) is to have a computational language that can describe things in the world&mdash;things people want to talk about&mdash;in computational terms. It&#8217;s common to take small pieces of natural language (like &#8220;density of tungsten&#8221;) and have our natural language understanding system turn them into symbolic representations from which we can do computation. In that sense, Wolfram Language is, as much as anything, a description of what Mathematica has become, recognizing that &#8220;mathematics&#8221; is no longer a central focus.</p> <p>I think there&#8217;s an interesting analogy between our effort to create a computational language and the origins of mathematical notation. Four hundred years ago, mathematics had to be described in words and ordinary language. But then mathematical notation was invented, and it provided a streamlined way for people to represent mathematical ideas&mdash;opening up the development of algebra, calculus and our modern mathematical sciences. It&#8217;s the same story with our computational language. We&#8217;re providing a broad language for representing computational ideas, and it&#8217;s unlocking &#8220;computational x&#8221; for essentially all fields x.</p> <p>Computational essays are an important concept in Wolfram Language. Today, people write papers, for example in physics, using a combination of human language and mathematical notation. But with our computational language, it&#8217;s possible to routinely represent computational ideas, in a form that not only computers, but also humans, can readily understand. Our computational language provides a new channel for communicating ideas, and it&#8217;s also immediately executable. That means the papers of the future can be computational essays where people can not just read, but also execute, what&#8217;s said. Underlying data can be brought in (for example from our <a href='https://datarepository.wolframcloud.com/'>Wolfram Data Repository</a>). And people can immediately build on one piece of work to do more.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="The concept of Wolfram Language (which is a direct extension of my original vision for Mathematica) is to have a computational language that can describe things in the world&mdash;things people want to talk about&mdash;in computational terms. It&#8217;s common to take small pieces of natural language (like &#8220;density of tungsten&#8221;) and have our natural language understanding system turn them into symbolic representations from which we can do computation. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> The concept of Wolfram Language (which is a direct extension of my original vision for Mathematica) is to have a computational language that can describe things in the world—things people want to talk about—in computational terms. It’s common to take small pieces of natural language (like “density of tungsten”) and have our natural language understanding system turn them into symbolic representations from which we can do computation. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2019-11-04 22:47:17"> <p class="date">November 4, 2019</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://physicsworld.com/a/exploring-the-computational-universe-with-stephen-wolfram/' target='_blank'>Interview by Margaret Harris, <em>Physics World</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2019/11/04/why-did-you-create-mathematica/">Why did you create Mathematica?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Because I wanted to use it myself. I was interested in physics from a young age, and I started doing physics research when I was in my early teens, in the mid-1970s. I didn&#8217;t like doing all the mathematical calculations that were needed, and I thought it should be possible to automate them. I soon became the main user of the various experimental systems for doing mathematical computation that existed at the time, but by 1979 I had outgrown them, so I decided I had to build a system for myself.</p> <p>The result was SMP, the first version of which was released in 1981. SMP ran on large computers and found users in quite a few areas, including physics. I started my first company to develop and market SMP. But quite quickly thereafter I went back to basic science, starting my explorations of cellular automata and the computational universe, and helping to found the field that&#8217;s now called complexity theory.</p> <p>By 1986, though, I decided there was an opportunity to create a more powerful tool that would cover all the computation I would ever want to do. That was also a time when personal computers were beginning to be able to do serious computation. And I wanted to build a system that could bring computation to a wide audience. At the time, most physicists really didn&#8217;t use computers themselves. They would delegate computing to someone else. I was very pleased with the way that Mathematica changed that and let actual physicists compute things themselves. It was a very nice transition to watch.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Because I wanted to use it myself. I was interested in physics from a young age, and I started doing physics research when I was in my early teens, in the mid-1970s. I didn&#8217;t like doing all the mathematical calculations that were needed, and I thought it should be possible to automate them. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Because I wanted to use it myself. I was interested in physics from a young age, and I started doing physics research when I was in my early teens, in the mid-1970s. I didn’t like doing all the mathematical calculations that were needed, and I thought it should be possible to automate them. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2019-11-04 22:49:04"> <p class="date">November 4, 2019</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://physicsworld.com/a/exploring-the-computational-universe-with-stephen-wolfram/' target='_blank'>Interview by Margaret Harris, <em>Physics World</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2019/11/04/how-has-mathematica-changed-over-the-past-30-years/">How has Mathematica changed over the past 30 years?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>Ninety-five percent of what&#8217;s in it now wasn&#8217;t there 30 years ago. The core principles of the system have stood the test of time extremely well, and I&#8217;m pleased to say that almost any Version 1 program from 1988 will still run in Version 12 today (something that is very rare in the computing world). The core symbolic programming paradigm of Mathematica was also already there 30 years ago, and was broadly applicable from the very beginning. But in the intervening years, we&#8217;ve dramatically broadened and deepened the coverage of mathematical computations. We&#8217;ve also expanded into a great many other areas, to the extent that mathematical computation is now perhaps only 10% of what the system does. We&#8217;re also dealing with multiparadigm data science, machine learning, all kinds of visualization, text computation, graphs and networks, image computation, geometry, audio computation, knowledge representation, and so on. Another major thing is that the program incorporates a huge amount of built-in real-world data, about chemicals or particles or planets&mdash;or countries, movies, and companies. This is the same data that powers Wolfram|Alpha, and which in turn powers intelligent assistants like Apple&#8217;s Siri and Amazon&#8217;s Alexa.</p> <p>Thirty years ago, we had already invented our notebook interface. Today that interface is considerably more developed, and it also runs in the cloud, so people can publish computable documents directly on the web. We&#8217;ve done a lot of work over the past 30 years, and the applications of Mathematica have dramatically expanded. Whether it&#8217;s being used as an embedded part of some robot or experimental data system, or for physics education with real-world data, or for the latest high-performance computation, there are things routinely done with Mathematica today that wouldn&#8217;t have been thinkable 30 years ago.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="Ninety-five percent of what&#8217;s in it now wasn&#8217;t there 30 years ago. The core principles of the system have stood the test of time extremely well, and I&#8217;m pleased to say that almost any Version 1 program from 1988 will still run in Version 12 today (something that is very rare in the computing world). <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> Ninety-five percent of what’s in it now wasn’t there 30 years ago. The core principles of the system have stood the test of time extremely well, and I’m pleased to say that almost any Version 1 program from 1988 will still run in Version 12 today (something that is very rare in the computing world). <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> <div class="project software-technology wolfram-language" data-position="normal" data-date="2019-11-04 22:52:28"> <p class="date">November 4, 2019</p> <p class="asker">From: <a href='https://physicsworld.com/a/exploring-the-computational-universe-with-stephen-wolfram/' target='_blank'>Interview by Margaret Harris, <em>Physics World</em></a></p> <h2 class="projectname"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/2019/11/04/how-is-computing-different-from-programming/">How is computing different from programming?</a></h2> <div class="introtext" data-text="<p>The key to computational language is to find a way to express whatever one wants to talk about in a form that a computer can understand. Programming languages are about starting from the underlying operations in a computer and working out how to tell the computer which operations to perform. A programming language has concepts like arrays or pointers. Our computational language, in contrast, has concepts like differential equations, or galaxies, or chemical elements, or countries. A lot of what&#8217;s normally considered &#8220;programming&#8221; is completely automated when you&#8217;re using our computational language. You&#8217;re essentially operating at a much higher level, and we&#8217;re taking care of all the details of doing what you want to as efficiently as possible. The people who are doing &#8220;computational x&#8221; are really interested in computational thinking, not in programming as such.</p> <a class='less' href='#close'>Close answer »</a>" data-truncate="The key to computational language is to find a way to express whatever one wants to talk about in a form that a computer can understand. Programming languages are about starting from the underlying operations in a computer and working out how to tell the computer which operations to perform. A programming language has concepts like arrays or pointers. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a>"> The key to computational language is to find a way to express whatever one wants to talk about in a form that a computer can understand. Programming languages are about starting from the underlying operations in a computer and working out how to tell the computer which operations to perform. A programming language has concepts like arrays or pointers. <a href="#more" class="more chevron-after">Read more</a> </div> <div class="text"> <a class="tag" data-tag="software-technology" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=software-technology">Software Technology</a> <a class="tag" data-tag="wolfram-language" href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/main/?c=wolfram-language">Wolfram Language</a> </div> </div> </div> </div> <footer id="footer"> <div class="inner"><a href="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/contact/">Contact</a> <span class="pipe">|</span> © Stephen Wolfram, LLC</div> </footer> <script src="https://www.stephenwolfram.com/questions/wp-content/themes/questions/js/scripts.js"></script> </main>  <div id ="IPstripe-wrap"></div> <script src="/common/stripe/stripe.en.js"></script>  </body> </html>

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