Wolfram Alpha has always been a interesting if not quirky ‘intelligent search engine’. It can do things like:
- Take derivatives – d(ln(x))/dx
- Generate star charts
- Show the position of the International Space Station
- Get detailed nutrition facts
- Stock analysis (Facebook)
- Routlette Payoffs
Now its creator, Stephen Wolfram, has announced a ‘language’ that bolts on top of the curated data Wolfram Alpha uses. It looks like Mathematica on steroids hooked to the cloud. This preview video is well worth watching:
From the video the Worlfram Language appears to be more like a high level collection of functions that fit nicely together to process data vs a ‘language’. The annoying part is, I don’t see a way to get my hands dirty and play with it at the moment.
More information:
- Wolfram Language Reference
- Initial Preview Announcement (Nov 13, 2013)
- Original Announcement (Feb 24, 2014)