Wolfram Mathematica: Comparative Analyses: Comparisons (2024)

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Wolfram Mathematica: Comparative Analyses: Comparisons (2)

Wolfram Mathematica: Comparative Analyses: Comparisons (3)

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Over the past two decades many important production systems across science, engineering and finance have been built in Mathematica. With the world's largest integrated web of highly efficient algorithms and a remarkable breadth of interoperability, Mathematica offers a unique level of productivity in the creation of reliable complex software systems.

Fully supporting modern cross-platform distributed computing environments, Mathematica raises the bar for computer languages by immediately including fully integrated dynamic visualization and advanced interface building, as well as sophisticated document generation and an unprecedented level of external data integration.

Mathematica's very high-level character and unified scalable architecture makes it possible to start creating sophisticated programs almost immediately, and then smoothly transition to full production systems deployed in enterprise, web and other environments—with long-term stability and automatic seamless algorithm upgrading.

Increasingly popular in computer science education for its power and immediacy, Mathematica defines a new level for the development of software applications—for the first time making practical concepts like symbolic representation and analysis of large-scale software architectures.

Standard Programming Language Features in Mathematica:

  • Full-function multiparadigm advanced programming language »
  • Advanced integrated semantics-aware code editor and debugger
  • Full Eclipse-based IDE, compatible with all standard tools and languages »
  • Fully compatible on all standard and emerging computer platforms »
  • Automatic use of platform-specific optimized internal libraries
  • Full integration with XML and modern web technologies »
  • Widespread international Mathematica programming community
  • Extensive courses and books available on Mathematica programming

Key Advantages of Mathematica as a Programming Language:

  • Immediate built-in access to the world's latest math and other algorithms
  • Automatic algorithm selection, typically vastly outperforming custom-written code
  • Consistent symbolic syntax and semantics across all data, functions and interfaces
  • Stable language on all platforms with consistent development since 1988 »
  • Symbolic paradigm maximizing code modularity, analyzability and testability
  • Fully integrated visualization, interface building, document generation and data interchange
  • Unified environment for model generation, analysis, execution and deployment
  • Symbolic structure allowing derivation and representation of code as well as data
  • Formulas entered in traditional math notation, for enhanced readability and verifiability
  • Built-in complex numbers, arbitrary-precision and automatic-precision tracking »
  • Immediate vector, matrix, and arbitrary-array programming »
  • Wide range of optimized data structures (e.g. sparse arrays and interpolating functions)
  • Integrated full-function code documentation system, with document programmability
  • Immediate pure Mathematica interface to arbitrary Java and .NET classes »
  • gridMathematica with full parallel programming & debugging capabilities
  • World-class in-house QA and broad usage ensuring high algorithm reliability
  • Mathematica Player free runtime environment

Interoperability with Other Programming Languages:

  • Uniform MathLink symbolic API for connection to arbitrary systems and languages »
  • Support for interchange of arbitrary data structures and programs
  • Full interoperability with Java, .NET, C, C++, etc. »
  • Built-in import and export of hundreds of standard formats »
  • Full web import and export, with arbitrary XML processing »
  • Integrated database connectivity »
  • Extensive support for web services and related technologies »
  • webMathematica for full web deployment
  • Third-party optimized code generation for C++, etc. »

Interesting Tidbits:

  • Most of Mathematica is developed in the Mathematica language
  • The complete software engineering system for Mathematica is written in Mathematica
  • Wolfram Research's world-class software testing system is written in Mathematica
  • High-traffic websites such as WolframTones and Wolfram Mathematica Online Integrator are completely written in Mathematica
  • Mathematica is often the first major software product running on new computer architectures
  • Mathematica is taught as a first programming language in many university courses
  • Mathematica is now routinely being learned by grade-school-age children

See Also Analyses On:

  • Grid Computing
  • Scripting Languages
  • Educational Programming Languages
  • Research Languages
  • Subroutine Libraries

Send a suggestion to the Mathematica analysis team »

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Wolfram Mathematica: Comparative Analyses: Comparisons (2024)

FAQs

What is better than Mathematica? ›

Looking for alternatives or competitors to Mathematica? Other important factors to consider when researching alternatives to Mathematica include functionality and user interface. The best overall Mathematica alternative is MATLAB. Other similar apps like Mathematica are Scilab, GNU Octave, Maple, and SageMath.

Is Mathematica a software or a language? ›

Mathematica is often the first major software product running on new computer architectures. Mathematica is taught as a first programming language in many university courses.

Does Mathematica do statistics? ›

Mathematica includes industrial-strength versions of the usual statistics and visualization capabilities, together with many important unique capabilities, made possible by its broad overall scope and extensibility, immense interconnected web of algorithms and integrated programming language and interface framework.

Is MATLAB faster than Mathematica? ›

It is a high-level programming language that is used for performing mathematical computing. It is a universal language that helps you to model any computational language. Development in MATLAB is slow. Development in Mathematica is fast compared to MATLAB.

Why is Maple better than Mathematica? ›

Maple includes interactive tutors for integration, differentiation, finding limits, and more. Students can solve problems on their own step-by-step, and Maple will provide a hint or the next step when asked, so students can practice and learn. Mathematica has nothing like these step-by-step tutors. Programming syntax.

Do engineers use Mathematica? ›

Engineering emerges as the single most common use of Mathematica. Within engineering, electrical engi- neering is the most common subfield, followed by mechanical engineering. mathematicians, the number of math- ematicians in the world is small rela- tive to the total number of scientists and engineers.

Is Mathematica similar to R? ›

Luckily, there are many similarities between the two when using tidyverse (for instance using the . and %>%, or using mapping functions).

Is Wolfram used in industry? ›

The Wolfram Solution for Industrial Engineering. Optimize your processes, implement quality management measures, rapidly prototype and deploy interactive applications and generate live reports automatically—all in one system, with one integrated workflow.

How good is Mathematica for machine learning? ›

Earlier versions of Mathematica had very limited capabilities to perform ML efficiently, but as years have passed, it has integrated many different ML functionalities that are easy to use with shortcode lines.

Is it worth it to learn Mathematica? ›

Mathematica is worth learning and using since it's so far ahead of the open source alternatives (e.g. Python/Jupyter and associated libraries ) in usability/interactivity/rapid development that it comes across like future-tech.

What do people use Mathematica for? ›

Wolfram Mathematica is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allow machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network analysis, time series analysis, NLP, optimization, plotting functions and various types of data, implementation of ...

Can I get Mathematica for free? ›

Try Mathematica for Free

Sign in or create a Wolfram ID to get your free 15-day trial of Mathematica.

Why is Mathematica better? ›

Mathematica requires no add-ons. It has built-in specialized functionality for many technical areas, from computational biology to wavelet analysis, all tightly integrated with the rest of the system. Mathematica immediately enables development across technical areas without costly add-ons.

Which engineers use MATLAB the most? ›

Mechanical engineers of Design and manufacturing field use MATLAB and Simulink heavily. You would be surprised to know that MATLAB also forms the based for different CAD software as well as designing software just like SOLIDWORKS.

What is harder Python or MATLAB? ›

Learning curve: Python is significantly simpler than Matlab and doesn't require as much background knowledge. Matlab is structured in a very logical and comprehensible way but is aimed at users with a deep knowledge of math.

Is SymPy better than Mathematica? ›

The results were Mathematica failed to solve 1,523 problems, Sympy failed to solve 48,529. So it has some catching up to do. SymPy is open source, mathematica is not. Additionally, SageMath (which depends on SymPy) is the more comparable product (and is open source).

Is SageMath better than Mathematica? ›

Mathematica rates 4.1/5 stars with 86 reviews. By contrast, SageMath rates 4.3/5 stars with 10 reviews. Each product's score is calculated with real-time data from verified user reviews, to help you make the best choice between these two options, and decide which one is best for your business needs.

What is the best math artificial intelligence? ›

Math AI Tools For Core Math Problem-Solving
  • #1 Photomath.
  • #2 Socratic by Google.
  • #3 Mathway.
  • #4 ClassPoint AI.
  • #5 Prodigy.
  • #6 Mathletics.
  • #7 Symbolab.
  • #8 GeoGebra.
Apr 5, 2024

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