This reminds me of the interactivity of Light Table.
Actually, a lot of features of Mathematica - not to mention the language itself - make me think "You know, this is pretty damn cool. I wish I could actually use it."
Am I the only who wishes that Mathematica and its core language weren't locked down so tightly to a single market? Just imagine if they released a free home version (monetizing off of W|A ads and suggestions), and/or a standalone kernel stripped of all of the frontend features. As it is now, innovation and creation with Mathematica is hampered heavily, and I don't see it gaining any more mass market recognition and usage. With a more free and open model, on the other hand, it might be able to break out.
I was only mentioning that sense of "free" tangentially, and I wasn't bemoaning my own situation, just theorizing that they could get much greater mass market penetration (which they seem to want) with a free tier.
I guess it wasn't very clear, but what I really meant was an open platform for hacking on. As it is it's very difficult to use Mathematica as a normal programming language, and it's clearly not designed for that (even though there is a vocal contingent at Wolfram that wants people to try anyway). If it were split off into two projects - a completely open core language and a set of closed symbolic math APIs + frontend tools on top of that language - then it would open it up for anyone to hack, create and innovate on, instead of playing around in their very heavy and very limited garden with no option to integrate with other tools, distribute, or improve and extend the language.
Actually, a lot of features of Mathematica - not to mention the language itself - make me think "You know, this is pretty damn cool. I wish I could actually use it."
Am I the only who wishes that Mathematica and its core language weren't locked down so tightly to a single market? Just imagine if they released a free home version (monetizing off of W|A ads and suggestions), and/or a standalone kernel stripped of all of the frontend features. As it is now, innovation and creation with Mathematica is hampered heavily, and I don't see it gaining any more mass market recognition and usage. With a more free and open model, on the other hand, it might be able to break out.
It's not like this is completely outside of Wolfram's vision for the product, either (first answer): http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfr...
Perhaps we'll see something more open with 10? I'm not holding my breath.