zlacker

>>nsoonh+(OP)
Man, I miss Wolfram Language. Once you've twisted your brain a little to grok its usage, it's such an incredibly high-value tool, especially for exploration and prototyping. I saw it more as a do-anything software tool for researchers rather than as a language aimed at programmers, so I put on a researcher hat and tried to forget everything I knew as a professional programmer, and had a few memorable seasons with it around 2016-2020. I remember calculating precisely which days of the year would cause the sunlight to pass through a window and some glass blocks in an internal wall, creating a beautiful light show indoors. It only took a couple of minutes to get a nice animated visualisation and a calendar.

Nowadays I'd probably just ask Claude to figure it out for me, but pre LLMs, WL was the highest value tool for thought in my toolbox.

(Edit: and they actually offer perpetual licenses!)

>>hebeje+N8
The power of the language came from the concise syntax (I liked it more then classical LISPs) with the huge library of Mathematica. When Python is "batteries included", Mathematica is "spaceship included".

If this was open sourced, it had the potential to severely change the software/IT industry. As an expensive proprietary software however, it is deemed to stay a niche product mainly for academia.

>>ktpsns+S9
As discussed on another thread, the outcome is poorly tools glued together, due to lack of roadmap and polish that commercial software usually supports, instead of volunteers coming and going, only caring for their little ich.

>>pjmlp+ec
Commercial software polish is lipstick on a pig. A pig that will never be anything else and will eventually die as a pig.

Ugly os software at least has potential to grow internally. Long lived commercial software is a totting carcass with fresh coat of paint every now and then.

>>scotty+qn
Yet, the Year of XYZ software seldom comes, the usual cheering of tools like Blender, often forgets its origin as commercial product and existing userbase.

Someone has to pay the bills for development effort, and when it based on volunteer work, it is mostly followers and not innovators.

>>pjmlp+Mr
There's nothing wrong with commercial software being the origin. What's a crime is that it can stay commercial. Source code should enter public domain in a decade at most.

>>scotty+Ls
> What's a crime is that it can stay commercial. Source code should enter public domain in a decade at most.

In many cases, people are free to write their own implementation. Your claim "Source code should enter public domain in a decade at most." means that every software vendor shall be obliged after some time to hand out their source code, which is something very strong to ask for.

What is the true crime are the laws that in some cases make such an own implementation illegal (software patents, probitions of reverse-engineering, ...).

>>aleph_+Su
> every software vendor shall be obliged after some time to hand out their source code,

Obviously. Since software is as much vital to the modern world as water, making people who deal with it disclose implementation details is a very small ask.

Access to the market is not a right but a privilege. If you want to sell things we can demand things of you.

>>scotty+rA
> Obviously. Since software is as much vital to the modern world as water, making people who deal with it disclose implementation details is a very small ask.

The analogy would be ever-so-slightly more accurate if you said "software is as much vital to the modern world as beverages".

It would also be more accurate if all water was free.

Neither of which is the case.