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10 projects to try on your Raspberry Pi using this unusual programming language
Coding club body CoderDojo has put together a guide to projects you can try out using the Wolfram Language.
If you recently bought a Raspberry Pi and are wondering what to do with it, the Raspberry Pi Foundation and CoderDojo have published 10 projects you can try using the Wolfram Language.
The Wolfram Language is different from your typical programming language, in that has a large number of built-in functions for carrying out high-level tasks, such as looking up stock prices or classifying images for facial recognition.
Language creator Stephen Wolfram has explained what he considers sets the language apart.
"It's a new kind of thing. It's what I call a knowledge-based language, it's a language where a vast amount of knowledge about how to do computations and about the world is built right into the language," he said.
"So, right within the language there are primitives for processing images or laying out networks or looking up stock prices or creating interfaces or solving optimization problems."
This broad sweep of built-in capabilities gives the language abilities that aren't found in most other languages out of the gate, for example, typing currentImage[] captures the current image from the computer's camera.
As such, the language is suited to tasks such as retrieving and working with a wide range of data, everything from written language to geographic information, as well as visualizing that data using relatively few lines of code.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday April 08 2019, @05:46PM (2 children)
Like most things Pi it is pointless, like the Pi.
So we have an otherwise smart guy putting out a press release hyping a language with an extensive set of library functions in 2019 like CPAN didn't exist or some shit. Doofus! Then, knowing that hype wouldn't be enough to get traction from wire services he adds a mention of a Pi port because he knows EVERY tech outlet can't resist any story with a Pi hook.
But in the end, who gives a damn about a closed source language in 2019? Assuming it is closed since it only seems to be available on the Pi specific builds of Debian, if there were sources available the odds are good it would be mainlined into Debian itself by now. Pi Foundation apparently doesn't give a crap about Free Software, they have it in https://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian/pool/main/w/wolfram-engine/ [raspberrypi.org] instead of contrib. But Pi doesn't even HAVE non-free or contrib sections, only main. Butt siphons.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @07:28PM
The Pi is not pointless. It's the only reason you can buy a $5 computer (Zero W) for DIY with good software support.
(Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Monday April 08 2019, @08:04PM
Well, I agree that this certainly has problems. You mention CPAN though, and I cannot abide Perl. You have proposed a cure that is worse than the disease. I say that in full confidence and everything I know about Wolfram is in the summary and comments.