Jason Grout wrote:
> Alex Ghitza wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Jason Grout
>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
>> > Carl
>> >
>> > Mathematica seems to have been successful with this approach. I'm
>> > curious what were the reasons for its disapproval. Perhaps it was
>> > feared it was error prone?
>>
>>
>> Along with the other reasons people are giving, it may be helpful to
>> remember that it is may be less error-prone in MMA. For example,
>> parentheses in Sage can denote function calling as well as grouping,
>> while they only denote grouping in MMA. With implicit multiplication,
>> func (x) and func(x) are both valid in Sage, but have different
>> meanings. In MMA, they both are multiplication, like you'd expect from
>> math.
>>
>>
>> ??? so you're saying that in Mathematica sin(x) means sin times x?
>> That's not what I'd expect from math...
>>
>> I must be misreading what you wrote.
>>
>
> Nope, you're correct. That's a nice thing about Mathematica. Function
> calls are always with square brackets, parentheses are purely a grouping
> construct. Curly braces are always lists, and double square brackets
> are indexing (but that's just syntactical sugar). System functions
> always use camel-case. I really like the consistency in mathematica; it
> makes it easy to learn and predictable.
>
Nevertheless I *hate* the Mathematica syntax!
See my rant from long ago: Why Mathematica is not my language of choice!
An example from the OEIS I happened to see today:
%t A055254 A055254[N_] := Count[ #, True] & /@ Map[OddQ, IntegerDigits /@ (2^# &
/@ Range[N])] (This generates a table of the number of odd
digits
in the first N powers of two.) - Douglas Skinner
(skinnerd(AT)comcast.net),
Dec 06 2007
(how easy to learn and remember) versus
%o A055254 (PARI) a(n)=sum(k=1,ceil(log(2^n+1)/log(10)),floor(2^n/10^(k-1))%2)
(Benoit
Cloitre, Feb 10 2006)
Not to speak how easy it will look in pure sage!
Cheers,
Jaap
> So your example would be Sin[x] in MMA.
>
> Jason
>
>
> >
>
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