[maliker]

I think the magic of Mathematica is the combination of (1) a huge collection of well-maintained CAS and math functions (2) great graphics and animation support (3) the notebook interface (which jupyter is catching up on fast) and (4) some of the best documentation in the industry.

Modifying the Mathematica code after its written, however, is very tricky.

[blt]

Even if some of the components in Mathematica are not state-of-the-art, there's a huge synergy benefit from having everything together in one environment, using the same datatypes. I think that's the big benefit of Mathematica and Matlab. Python can match (or exceed) a lot of their capabilities but you spend all this time with package managers, converting data types, etc.

[brianwawok]

What is this time with package managers? Takes an hour one time to learn pip and virtualenv. Then its 1 pip command to install a package.

[aisofteng]

An hour? I'd say about five minutes.

[sizzzzlerz]

What you said plus the accuracy and precision to which results are computed. They're effectively limited only by the amount memory you have and your patience. And even patience isn't required unless you're calculating pi to trillions of digits. It's really fast.