[dig1]

I will second this. Wolfram (Stephen and company) marketing isn't spot on, but I'm yet going to find a system like Mathematica. People on HN forget that most of the places where Mathematica is intended to (R&D, math/physics departments, research facilities etc.) don't have tech people willing to battle with Python versions, packages, Jupyter installations, and all sort of nuances - they just want an installation they are going to click and immediately have a huge library for everything.

And no, "just run pip ..." will not work - who worked on these facilities probably knows how some of the smartest people in the world could be extremely dumb with the tech stuff.

Regarding Wolfram Language, at the beginning (when it was just a "Mathematica"), I hated it as I came from the C/C++ world. But after I embraced lisp et al., I found Wolfram Language very expressive and easier to grasp than before. Moreover, if I'm not mistaken, Wolfram Language is the only widespread implementation of M-expressions [1], the original form of LISP how John McCarthy wanted it to look.

> The front-end is just lightyears in front of Jupyter notebooks in just about every conceivable way.

Absolutely :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-expression

[ISL]

I recall some unpleasant fights with license-servers in my past.

[buescher]

It only takes pip breaking once before "only free if your time has no value" becomes all too real.

[7thaccount]

It is a TRS (term rewriting system) and very cool. I've posted on this before. There's not a whole lot on TRS, but there is some information out there.