45
votes
How can I define a new symbolic constant like Pi?
I was recently reminded that the following "functions" are settable, and I was surprised (even though I've seen this before). So I thought that it is valuable to share this information.
There are ...
- 232k
38
votes
How could Wolfram Research increase Wolfram Language adoption?
OP's take
Why I like WL
My time is valuable. Learning usage of several new functions from the WL docs takes less time than sifting through the disparate documentation and learning OO class structures ...
- 968
33
votes
Accepted
Why did the Mathematica Language choose term rewriting instead of the Lambda Calculus as its basis?
The short answer is that the Mathematica Language did not choose anything. It was Stephen Wolfram back in 1979 when he started working on his own system after he reached the boundaries of Maxima which ...
- 112k
33
votes
Accepted
The paradigm behind Dynamic and related functionality
General
With a disclaimer that I am by far not an expert in this field, I will still try to answer. Perhaps this answer could then be improved by others more knowledgable than me.
Model
From the ...
- 114k
33
votes
Accepted
Why it seems that there is no counterpart function as to multiplication, to `Total` as to addition?
In addition to the previous answer...
I designed and implemented Total 17 years ago. Its first version was named ListSum. The ...
- 37.2k
32
votes
Accepted
++ is dangerous for C programmers
I believe Increment (more accurately PreIncrement as george2079 noted) is essentially this:
...
- 269k
31
votes
What's the deal with next generation Wolfram compiler?
First, no one outside of Wolfram could use the compiler so far.
From what I have seen, it will be very much comparable to what the Julia language does. If you watched the videos closely, you'll ...
- 112k
28
votes
What are all the "magic" symbols in the Mathematica language?
uh oh, another "work in progress" answer from me that may never be finished.
Unevaluated
Robby Villegas, Working with Unevaluated Expressions:
...
- 269k
28
votes
Is mathematica adequately improving?
Update July 12, 2023. added 13.3 integration result (differential equations and PDE's update for V 13.3 will take more time)
Mathematica is very large and complex software which covers many many ...
- 135k
26
votes
Resolving my Entity* Crisis
As an employee at Wolfram who is partly involved with development of the entity framework, let me give my take on things. Particularly, I want to address the following points raised by the OP and in ...
- 887
24
votes
Accepted
What's the difference between these 2 associations?
Preamble
The real problem here seems somewhat deeper than what the (mostly correct) observations in comments indicate. In Mathematica, a number of objects, which are so-called raw objects (including ...
- 114k
24
votes
Accepted
Programming language prototyping in Mathematica
General
Some general answers and comments first.
1
Are you aware of any projects using the Wolfram language resp. Mathematica as an environment to explore the design of programming languages - in ...
- 37.2k
23
votes
How could Wolfram Research increase Wolfram Language adoption?
As an academic in math and engineering, I like many of Mathematica's abilities, especially the ability to quickly prototype algorithms and check analytical results.
In addition to the many points ...
- 1,089
22
votes
Accepted
Version inconsistency with optional arguments: what if the default value doesn't match the pattern?
Update: Daniel Lichtblau authoritatively comments:
This change was intentional, and per request of the boss.
I can find no mention of this in the documentation, though I am still looking. My ...
- 269k
22
votes
Is expression in Mathematica well defined?
John Doty's answer says it very well:
Even atoms have heads, they just aren't normally displayed, even in FullForm.
I'll also respond to OP's comment:
J.M.: Look ...
- 3,463
20
votes
Accepted
Unexpected behaviour when pattern matching with Longest
There are a number of subtle details at work here. Perhaps the prominent one is that in string expressions, unlike expression patterns, Longest and ...
- 68.3k
20
votes
Accepted
Why is an empty list not tested by VectorQ?
Others have argued in the comments that this behaviour makes sense mathematically, and I fully agree. But further than that, it is also very practical.
Mathematica's functions are usually designed ...
- 232k
19
votes
Is expression in Mathematica well defined?
Even atoms have heads, they just aren't normally displayed, even in FullForm.
Head[1]
(* Integer *)
Head[Symbol]
(* Symbol *)
- 13.6k
19
votes
Accepted
What are the benefits of Entity Classes for Databases?
Preamble
As was already hinted in the comments, the new functionality is a much higher level. It is basically a compiler from entity query language to SQL, specialized to a given SQL dialect of the ...
- 114k
19
votes
Why are Quantity and Units inconsistent with regular Mathematica behavior?
Not a solution but an extended comment.
You misunderstand the physical underpinnings of quantities and units.
Every physical quantity has an inherent margin of error, even if it is very small (...
- 44.9k
18
votes
What naming conventions are used for functions?
You'll find plenty of exceptions if you keep looking — e.g. MapThread (action-action), FileExtension (object-object), ...
- 88.1k
17
votes
Resolving my Entity* Crisis
From what I can tell, the Wolfram Knowledge Base is organized around three ideas from epistemology: concepts, units, and properties:
A concept is a set of related concrete perceptions. For example, '...
- 1,631
17
votes
Accepted
Second argument of BeginPackage with nested package loading
I've certainly encountered this behavior before. While I can't speak authoritatively, I'd think this is as designed, although it does introduce certain inconsistency. I also think that this issue is a ...
- 114k
17
votes
Accepted
Is $2x$ documented?
From Your First Wolfram Language Calculations:
2x means 2*x.
Examples of no-space multiplication from ...
- 233k
16
votes
Why it seems that there is no counterpart function as to multiplication, to `Total` as to addition?
Total is different from Plus@@ because it uses tricks to minimize round-off error. It is thus a useful addition to the toolkit. <...
- 13.6k
16
votes
How could Wolfram Research increase Wolfram Language adoption?
I know several people who use Maxima as a widely adopted mathematical computer language on the internet. Some of these people greatly prefer a proprietary language, but they all understand that a ...
- 261
15
votes
What is not an expression in the Wolfram Language?
Comments like (* blah *) are not expressions.
ToExpression["(* blah *)"]
returns Null.
...
- 39.2k
15
votes
How could Wolfram Research increase Wolfram Language adoption?
I am a professional software developer with a passion for scientific computing, but I’m not about to pay a cent to use scientific computing software when there are comparable alternatives. Hence, I ...
- 167
14
votes
Why did Mathematica choose brackets for function arguments over parentheses?
Although Chip's answer already suffices to address the question, I would like to quote here a relevant part of the dialog by Theo Gray and Jerry Glynn in their book Exploring Mathematics with ...
14
votes
Accepted
ToExpression and ToBoxes aren't inverses of each other?
It is well-documented!
According to the Documentation page for StandardForm,
StandardForm generates output that gives a ...
- 61.3k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible