[jhbadger]

Well, he claimed that Mathematica, particularly cellular automata implemented in Mathematica, would bring about "A New Kind of Science" as described in his thick book of that name. It didn't of course -- people like to still play with cellular automata like The Game of Life (or my favorite, Wireworld), but no revolution in science involving CAs has occurred. The whole thing was a marketing ploy for Mathematica disguised as science. Not mention that the only truly new thing mentioned in the book (that CAs can be Turing complete) wasn't even Wolfram's finding, but rather Matthew Cook's (who sued him for not crediting it to him, although they have since settled).

[zamadatix]

Wolfram does lots of wacky stuff but how does it make Mathematica any less tangibly useful today? He can want to use Mathematica as part of eradicating cancer using toilet brushes and it would still not change that Mathematica is and has been an extremely useful piece of software for decades. The point isn't every single thought he has is gospel revolution it's that Mathematica is already a delivered value.

[me_me_me]

That's still not very adequate comparison.

Musk has been promising self driving for... what 10 years now?

Hyping a working tool like Mathematica that will bring a revolution is a vague hope rather than a concrete promise of outcome.

[fooker]

Musk doesn't do this for you.

Notice the pattern, he does it to attract the kind of engineers attracted to solving 'unsolvable' problems.

Whether that's a good strategy is up in the air.

[me_me_me]

ah yes mastermind musk defense.

He is not 'lying' he is 'envisioning future to motivate engineers'.

[fooker]

He’s totally lying, just not to you.

Good engineers in specialized fields are really difficult to hire, this might not be apparent to people in the software industry.