[HN Gopher] Stephen Wolfram - re:Clojure Keynote [video]
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Stephen Wolfram - re:Clojure Keynote [video]
        
       Author : tosh
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2021-12-05 11:23 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | awak3ning wrote:
       | Wolfram's ego has always been the most off putting thing about
       | him and his project. I was quite disappointed by the lack of
       | Clojure relevant material in this Keynote and the unabashed
       | emphasis on himself and his product.
        
       | ppod wrote:
       | I do understand the pushback on Wolfram's egotism and self-
       | branding stuff, but he is absolutely wonderful to listen to and
       | still comes across as a bit of a genius. I think history will be
       | kind to him.
        
       | znpy wrote:
       | It starts interesting but it then kinda becomes a
       | Mathematica/Wolfram marketing stunt ?
        
         | spoonjim wrote:
         | Every utterance from Wolfram is Mathematica marketing, even
         | when he writes (amazing) eulogies for his late friends.
        
         | queuebert wrote:
         | I can't figure out if Wolfram is a brilliant scientist or a
         | brilliant carney.
        
           | pmarreck wrote:
           | There's a certain type of "success trap" where one's first
           | success is so significant that they don't ever need to figure
           | out how to work with other people (or at least people who are
           | peers and not underlings), and I think that's where the
           | "carney" element comes from, where you're sort of drunk on
           | your own hubris (regardless of actual merit)
        
           | jonas21 wrote:
           | Why not both?
        
         | Keyframe wrote:
         | Classic Wolfram then?
         | 
         | edit: watching it.. SMP, Wolfram, computational language, he
         | did all of that for past 40 years of course, he even managed to
         | put himself in the same sentence as John McCarthy, they
         | invented notebooks and then he's showcasing
         | Mathematica/notebook.. I actually quite like Wolfram, but
         | sometimes he's just a tad too much.
        
           | copperx wrote:
           | He forgot about Clojure after a minute or so. Never forget
           | your audience.
        
             | nightski wrote:
             | Mathematica uses a functional language at its core. As a
             | functional language enthusiast (including Clojure, although
             | I haven't used it for anything professionally) I find
             | discussions about any functional language interesting.
             | 
             | In other words, I doubt the only thing Clojure folks care
             | about is Clojure.
        
             | Keyframe wrote:
             | neat overview of mathematica, or wolfram desktop or
             | whatever.. angle being language design.. but yeah, clojure
             | disappeared as soon as the camera turned on.
        
           | dmos62 wrote:
           | I'm normally sensitive to people being full of themselves and
           | I've no such sensation with Wolfram. I'm fascinated by what
           | he has to say; I find his perspective on computational and
           | programming languages, him being a specialist outsider,
           | insightful and valuable.
        
         | AlexCoventry wrote:
         | Thanks, I came over here to see whether it goes anywhere
         | worthwhile.
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | mark_l_watson wrote:
       | I learned a lot watching the demo. Twice in the last three years
       | I have signed up for Wolfram Desktop (about $30/month) and
       | experimented with it. They even added some semantic web and
       | SPARQL support. Watching his demo was good documentation.
       | 
       | Both times I signed up for the service, I canceled after a few
       | months because I didn't have a real use case.
       | 
       | Ten years ago, I experimented with my own Clojure to Wolfram
       | Language bindings https://github.com/mark-
       | watson/clojure_wolfram_alpha
        
       | shaftoe444 wrote:
       | Wolfram is on from -2:15:40
        
         | sokoloff wrote:
         | +9:40:10 seems a useful timestamp reference to me if your
         | YouTube client references from the start of video.
         | 
         | At +10:06:00, he starts talking a bit about clojure. 26 minutes
         | into his presentation at a clojure conference and he talks
         | about clojure for well under 2 minutes, most of which was
         | analyzing the text on the wikipedia page for clojure...
         | 
         | At +10:16, he then very briefly demos a linkage from the
         | clojure repl into the Wolfram Engine, which is arguably the
         | only part that's specifically interesting to most conference
         | watchers.
         | 
         | If this were a keynote at a Wolfram conference, it would have
         | been a better fit than as a keynote at a Clojure conference.
        
       | vmsp wrote:
       | I had never heard of Mathematica before.
       | 
       | I'm pretty sure I'd never use it for anything but one thing that
       | caught my eye is how easy it is to generate mock data. E.g.
       | WordList
        
         | spoonjim wrote:
         | It's one of the best pieces of software in the world, with
         | things like Microsoft Excel and Google Maps. It is run by an
         | absolutely insufferable guy but he does a good job with it.
        
         | ithinkso wrote:
         | Can I ask you how old are you? Or who do you work?
         | 
         | Most of people in tech do not use Mathematica but I would put a
         | lot of chips on a bet that most heard of it. That's why I'm
         | courious
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-12-05 23:00 UTC)