Replacing Mathematica with Python

http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/07/09/replacing-mathematica-with-python/

by wglb • 16 years ago

32 16 16 years ago

hugh3• 16 years ago

Article rather under-delivers on its headline.

Summary of article: "You might be able to replace Mathematica with Python, at least for certain applications! But I don't know, I haven't tried it, I just had a quick look at some websites."

tumult2• 16 years ago

Mathematica seems like a much cooler language than Python. Python is like a dynamic Lisp but with an emphasis on imperative programming.

knv• 16 years ago

What do you mean by "dynamic Lisp"?

stuhacking2• 16 years ago

Mathematica is also a lot like Lisp and Mathematica also supports imperative programming. It's also a lot faster than Python.

In fact, I would argue that the only drawback with Mathematica is the fact that you become locked in. (whether or not you care about that is your prerogative.)

mayanklahiri• 16 years ago

When Python's symbolic computation abilities are even at a tenth of Mathematica's (especially for discrete functions like we love in computer science), I'd be more than happy to switch over. Perhaps someone could integrate Python with Sage or Octave.

jamii• 16 years ago

http://www.sagemath.org/

Not quite as swish as mathematica but definitely better than 1/10.

dnautics5• 16 years ago

not even. I'm working on a mathematica notebook that (mathematically, not physically) simulates the action of an enzyme... It generates a 120x120 matrix of kinetic parameters, symbolically solves to make sure there aren't contradictions (mostly conservation of mass), and then solves the 120-parameter differential equation. Then it does it 1000 times and collates the data (although I'm sure python could do that).

pmiller2• 16 years ago

I really like both Python and Mathematica, but if I have a mathematics-based task, 90% of the time I'll choose Mathematica over Python. Why? Well, Mathematica's programming language is pleasant to work with, resembling a dialect of lisp with pattern-matching built in, but the real win is in the libraries. If you have a numerical or symbolic computing task, chances are excellent that either there's a function to do it already in the Mathematica standard library, or Mathematica will let you write it in under a page of code.

dnautics5• 16 years ago

that's not to say that there aren't things to have pet peeves about mathematica. What's with array dereferencing being [[]]? Makes my head spin.

gjm112• 16 years ago

Type ESC [ [ ESC and ESC ] ] ESC, and you get "thick" square bracket characters instead, which looks less silly.

I think it's clear enough where the [[...]] came from: Wolfram wanted "a b" to mean "a times b", which means "a (b + c)" has to mean "a times (b plus c)", which means you need a different notation for function application; they chose square brackets, which means they aren't available for subscripting (because everything, functions included, is an expression, and expressions are subscriptable); so they needed something else. And {...} was already taken for list construction.

When what you're doing in Mathematica looks more like mathematics than programming, you don't need a lot of subscripts. Presumably that's why subscripting is the thing that got the ugly notation with extra characters.

(The thing I find most unpleasant about programming in Mathematica is the way it tries to use pattern-matching as the single fundamental tool. This gives Mathematica programming, for me, something of the same feel as getting a macro-expansion based system like bash or TeX to do tricky things. But I'm not all that expert with Mathematica, and it's possible that more experienced users happily internalize the details and don't get confused as I do.)

Replacing Mathematica with Python

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