The audience for Mathematica (Was: Re: Show doesn't work inside Do loop ?)
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg102043] The audience for Mathematica (Was: Re: Show doesn't work inside Do loop ?)
- From: AES <siegman at stanford.edu>
- Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 05:56:50 -0400 (EDT)
- Organization: Stanford University
- References: <32390795.1248259308283.JavaMail.root@n11> <h4951e$q2e$1@smc.vnet.net> <200907241016.GAA17537@smc.vnet.net> <h4h235$if5$1@smc.vnet.net>
In article <h4h235$if5$1 at smc.vnet.net>, Murray Eisenberg <murray at math.umass.edu> wrote: > > ----- (stuff snipped) ----- > > So of course the inexperienced user is perplexed here. > > Now the issue becomes one of language design: Should the Mathematica > language -- or any computer language, for that matter -- be designed > primarily with the inexperienced user in mind? Fair question. Perhaps one answer is: It should be designed primarily with the _expected audience_ in mind -- and beyond that, should be as consistent and non-perplexing as possible, for that and for any audience. As a more specific definition of an expected audience, it seems to me (and, I think, Helen Read) that Mathematica -- or at least a more consistent and less perplexing form of Mathematica: 1) Could be very accessible to bright high school students, maybe with some hand holding; 2) Could be (and to some extent is) useful to average college students and to working BS level engineers as a helpful working tool in any technical or mathematically oriented area; and 3) Could be (and to a considerable extent is) a very, very powerful personal hands-on tool for graduate students, faculty, designers, engineers, and researchers for doing real work in a very wide range of fields (not just engineering, math or science). And that's a very massive audience. (Note that I'm writing here about people whose primary focus is on, and whose energies are primarily devoted to, the work they want to do -- the problems they want to solve -- and who do not want to convert their primary focus to becoming a Mathematica expert.) Of course, there's the alternative audience of professional Mathematica experts, whose full time or near full time occupation is becoming expert at using Mathematica, with all its complexities and perplexing features. That's a much smaller audience. (And to be just a little snide here, many of those people are essentially "programmers", who are hired as such by the upper levels of my audience #3 above.) So, which audience is WRI aiming at, because it really can't have both (or maybe it can, to some extent -- but it really can't serve both well). ==========EARLIER POST HERE=============== > AES wrote: > > In article <h4951e$q2e$1 at smc.vnet.net>, > > "David Park" <djmpark at comcast.net> wrote: > > > >> A Do loop never generates any output on its own. Print generates the > >> output, > >> so add a Print header to the Show statement. > > > > David, > > > > Can't quarrel with your overall response here -- but might you also > > agree that your two statements above are in a real sense contradictory. > > > > To put it another way: > > > > * Show, executed in a single cell, sure generates output. > > > > * Print, executed in a single cell, sure generates output. > > > > So, I think my off-cited even if mythical "ordinary user" would very > > reasonably conclude that wrapping Show *or* Print in a Do should produce > > multiple versions of the single-cell output. Producing multiple > > versions of what some single-cell expression does is what Do loops are > > *supposed* to "do" -- nicht wahr? And "Show" is as an imperative a verb > > as is "Print". > > > > I'm not really interested in why Print can Do, and Show can't. I'm just > > noting that this is an easily and reasonably misunderstood situation, > > and that's unfortunate. > >
- References:
- Re: Show doesn't work inside Do loop ?
- From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
- Re: Show doesn't work inside Do loop ?