It is never ever to late to have a smart Christmas wishlist. That said, there are some very good reasons to start with algebra and programming. If you still need some good arguments;.
You get Mathematica for free in Raspbian OS on the Raspberry Pi and the pi is quite cheap, plus, the pi is great for learning python or java and is cool in many other ways for learning. Everyone's answer here is very useful. I just want to emphasize that the Wolfram Language the language behind Mathematica is a multi-purpose language and is knowledge-based using real world entities and data Wolfram Alpha knowledge is fully accesible from the language.
You can see a lot of non-math examples here and here. The language is also connected to different external services and devices you can easily use from Mathematica. Take note of all resources people here already mentioned, specially the wolfram cloud and programming lab which are free. Finally, you are very young and seem to be very enthusiastic.
You may be interested in the Mathematica summer camp Wolfram organizes every year. Most people who seem to appreciate a software that prefers to be closed source have certainly not programmed a CAS themselves. Its a painful job indeed, moreover its time consuming.
Suggesting that MMA can bring to you very complex methods very abstractly is not a beneficial aspect for a researcher because it doesn't tell you how they accomplished it and it could well have take years of work and research that you need to do all over again. Are you going to use it just to check your results? There are other software that does similar work, say Maple and Maxima open source, hence all free code and also matlab though its a master of heavy numerical computation.
Also except for their core parts, they have made all the source of algorithms and libraries available to users for free which one can debug to study a complex book on numerical algorithms with full understanding. As you will learn other programming languages with age, you will study basic loop constructs like for,if else, do while.. But MMA will disappoint you with these constructs because its inherently slow with these which are present in every other language with minor speed difference.
List constructs might run very good in one scenario and for some other problem it can be very slow. Again you might need to change your code. Problem with patterns is that they are not that readable and you will have to break them into piece to get a hold. Surprisingly no other CAS has followed this approach even though I personally find pattern matching very useful.
Richard Fateman wrote this pattern matcher in lisp but it has not been really merged into Maxima, and in Maple it is all imperative. If programming interests you, you will certainly like to code one for yourself in future and for that you need to understand internals of a CAS. For now, start with Mathematica, learn it properly, love it and move to explore other platforms. Then chose the best. Only factor that I prefer Maxima,Maple,Matlab over Mathematica is that they share their code and they are like teachers to me.
Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Is Mathematica worth it for me? Ask Question. Asked 5 years, 11 months ago. Active 2 years, 7 months ago. Viewed 13k times. Can I really use Mathematica? So my question is: Can I program in Mathematica with only a basic understanding of math?
Improve this question. Nico A Nico A 3, 1 1 gold badge 11 11 silver badges 25 25 bronze badges. Math knowledge is not a requirement. This might elicit subjective answers. Having said that: Yes, if you had fun already, please continue by all means to use it!
In any case, go ahead and explore! The math will come to you by itself, hands-on experimenting is a superb way to learn. Let me know if I can help you somehow. Adriana O'Brien, Wolfram Research. We have lots of free ondemand courses available online for you to start learning how to program in Mathematica. For examle: An Introduction to Mathematica. We also have lots of how-to videos on the Wolfram Screencast and Video Gallery. Rodrigo Murta, Looqbox.
For me this is the most complete list of resources: Where can I find examples of good Mathematica programming practice? And there is there is the official Mathematica book that you can download for free in PDF format in this link. It's old but it's really good. I have trained some people in Mathematica, and after some time and a lot of tests, in my opinion start with Mathematica Book is the best option. Michael Gmirkin. All of these will give inline equivalents to many of the resources above.
Though the web site has some additional tutorials, how-to's etc. So, take a look there as well. Hope that all helps! An hour is a little bit too short for the Mathematica Cookbook, but a day should be sufficient to read the introductory information about the important aspects of Mathematica, as well as trying out a few recipes to get an idea about what Mathematica can do. Ignore all the syntax shortcuts for now. Ignore all built-in atomic types besides nested expressions of symbols.
Learn everything about the interpreter, i. As an exercise, implement the Mathematica interpreter within Mathematica. Make it operate on held expressions. Wolfram Mathematica. Hands-on Start to Wolfram Mathematica and Programming with the Wolfram Language Get a hands-on introduction to Mathematica with examples and exercises for interactive learning.
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