A New Mathematica Programming Style, Part Two

The list of abbreviated operators from which this table was generated is in the previous post (Part One). Now we continue the slides from my 2007 presentation of a new Mathematica dialect.








Suggestions for Wolfram Research

• Use the Precedence table in documentation instead of Operator Input Forms table
• Add mouseover Tooltips with Precedence to all abbreviated operators so we can readily see their Precedence
• Map Tones on to all abbreviated operators' Tooltips, scaled appropriately, so we can mouseover them and hear their Precedence
• And liberate Tones from CellularAutomata; Tones should permeate Mathematica—Mathematica should sound like R2D2

Questions for Wolfram Research

• How does PrecedenceForm work?
• How do the "structural elements," all having Precedence = 670, work?
• Why not make Comma right-associative with actual Precedence 670 so we can write multiple-argument Prefix functions like this:

f@a,b,c := g@i,j,k

Next: Syntax Problems 3, 4, 5 and 6

Nested matchfix violates various programming good practices

"The guiding principle [of the order of statements of code] is the Principle of Proximity: Keep related actions together."

Manipulate[
 GraphicsRow[{Graphics[Disk[]], Graphics[Disk[]], Graphics[Disk[]]},
  Spacings -> Scaled[i], Frame -> True, Dividers -> All],  {i, .1, 1}]

"If you draw a box around each statement, they should not overlap."

"As a general principle, make the program read from top to bottom rather than jumping around. Experts agree that top-to-bottom order contributes most to readability."

"The Fundamental Theorem of Formatting is that good visual layout shows the logical structure of the program."
-Steve McConnell, Code Complete

'The price paid for functional style programs without excess auxiliary variables is "a large number of brackets."'
  -Michael Trott

Postfix "afterthought" functions can't take arguments, which stymies extended command-line programming

For example, how do you enter options for Plot:

3 Cos[x] + 2 Cos[2 x] + Cos[3 x] //Plot[ ??]

Initiates to functional programming need to learn to think "inside out" or right-to-left

Procedural programmers are often less than thrilled with functional syntax

We would like to write code to emphasize what's important and downplay what's not

Illustration of Matchfix Readability Problems

Compare three versions of a simple function using increasing numbers of optional arguments

Note the violation of the Principle of Proximity

Do boxes drawn around statements overlap?

In example #3, note the code is structured to emphasize whichever expression we wish, in this case, GraphicsRow, not Manipulate, which is just the "wrapper"

Manipulate[GraphicsRow[{Graphics[Disk[]], Graphics[Disk[]], Graphics[Disk[]]},
  Spacings -> Scaled[i], Frame -> True, Dividers -> All],  {i, .1, 1}]

Manipulate[ GraphicsRow[{Graphics[Disk[]], Graphics[Disk[]], Graphics[Disk[]]},
  Spacings -> Scaled[i], Frame -> True, Dividers -> All,
  Alignment -> {Center, Center} , AlignmentPoint -> Center,
  AspectRatio -> Automatic, Axes -> False, AxesLabel -> None,
  AxesOrigin -> Automatic, AxesStyle -> {}, Background -> None,
  BaselinePosition -> Automatic, BaseStyle -> {},
  ColorOutput -> Automatic, ContentSelectable -> Automatic,
  DisplayFunction :> $DisplayFunction, Dividers -> None,
  Epilog -> {}],  {i, .1, 1}]

GraphicsRow[{Graphics@Disk[], Graphics@Disk[], Graphics@Disk[]},
 Spacings -> Scaled@i, Frame -> True, Dividers -> All,
 Alignment -> {Center, Center} , AlignmentPoint -> Center,
 AspectRatio -> Automatic, Axes -> False, AxesLabel -> None,
 AxesOrigin -> Automatic, AxesStyle -> {}, Background -> None,
 BaselinePosition -> Automatic, BaseStyle -> {},
 ColorOutput -> Automatic, ContentSelectable -> Automatic,
 DisplayFunction :> $DisplayFunction, Dividers -> None, Epilog -> {}]
// Manipulate[#,  {i, .1, 1}] &

And the more nested the function, the worse it is

Postfix/Pure Function Style: Functional-Procedural Fusion

A Solution: extended usage of Postfix and pure Function

As an alternative to this 'traditional' usage of matchfix (the error is deliberate):

expr7 [ expr6 [ expr5 [expr4 [expr3 [expr2 [expr1 ] ] ] ] ] ] ]

Consider writing this, using Postfix and pure Function:

expr1 // expr2 # & // expr3 # & // expr4 # & // expr5 # & // expr6 # & // expr7 # &

And you can write it down the page, too:

expr1 //
expr2 # & //
expr3 # & //
expr4 # & //
expr5 # & //
expr6 # & //
expr7 # &

It works as simply as this:

expr1 // expr2 #& is parsed as: expr2[expr1]

Amounts to a fusion of procedural and functional styles

Functional programming that looks procedural

FP Fusion Examples

Command line or one-liner

Sin@x//Plot[#,{x, -5, 5}]&

Extended one-liner or function

This fits the general pattern of a class of functions. You generate some data or intialize a function, then perform a few transformations on it, and then you want to view it.

Here we write it as a readable one-liner, sequentially across the page.

Clear@g; g@x_ := RandomReal[];
Table[g@i, {i, 100}] //Take[#, 80]& //100 #& //#^2& //ListPlot[#, Filling->Axis]&

Or sequentially down the page, nice and clean.

g@x_ := RandomReal[];
Table[g@i, {i, 100}] //
Take[#, 80]& //
100 #& //
#^2& //
ListPlot[#, Filling->Axis]&

If needed, we can use variable assignment within Postfix statements by appropriate parentheses:

Range@6 // (list1 = Partition[#, 3]) &; list1[[1]]

{1, 2, 3}

Summary

Computer programming's destiny is to control high-order complexity

Mathematica is a modern scientific synthesis whose core is the most advanced programming language paradigm

Mathematica's destiny is to play a lead role in the scientific challenges of our age

Version 8 shows its capabilities go far beyond those of any other programming language

Prefix and FP Fusion are a suggested improvement in syntax toward more understandable and controllable programs

Comments and suggestions are welcome: lowlevelfunctionary@kriscarlson.com

Acknowledgements and References

Stephen Wolfram

The Mathematica Book
Code examples in A New Kind of Science

Roman Maeder, harry calkins

A First Course in Mathematica
Programming in Mathematica

Roman Maeder

Programming in Mathematica 2nd Ed.
The Mathematica Programmer
The Mathematica Programmer II
Computer Science with Mathematica

David B. Wagner

Power Programming in Mathematica: The Kernel

John W. Gray

Mastering Mathematica, 2nd Ed.: Programming Methods and Applications

Michael Trott

The Mathematica Guidebook: Programming

Paul R. Wellin, Richard J. Gaylord, and Samuel N. Kamin

An Introduction to Programming with Mathematica, 3rd Ed.

Christian Jacob

Illustrating Evolutionary Computation with Mathematica

Nancy Blachman

Mathematica: A Practical Approach

Stan Wagon

Mathematica in Action

And thanks to the attendees of this talk who had valuable suggestions, in particular Paul Abbott, and their forbearance of my first effort using a Mathematica slide show

A New Mathematica Programming Style, Part One

This is the presentation I gave at the Wolfram User Conference in 2007, updated for version 8. Part Two is here.

A New Mathematica Programming Style, Part One

Kris Carlson

Author, The Way of Mathematica (forthcoming)

An Historical Perspective on Computer Programming

"The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think. The essence of this change is the emergence of ... procedural epistemology--the study of the structure of knowledge from an imperative point of view, as opposed to the more declarative point of view taken by classical mathematical subjects. Mathematics provides a framework for dealing precisely with notions of 'what is.' Computation provides a framework for dealing precisely with notions of 'how to.'"

Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Origins of Geometry

Beginnings: Accurately surveying land boundaries

Destiny: Euclid's creation of the first axiomatic science

Origins of Computer Programming

Beginnings: Very abstract notions of computation by Church, Turing, Kleene and others

Destiny: The control of complex processes

The Main Challenges of Modern Science

Genetic Engineering

Taking control of the analog computer program immanent in DNA-RNA-protein

Artificial Intelligence

Reverse-engineering the agencies of intelligence created by evolution and creating new ones

Creating and initially controlling intelligences greater than our own

Nanotechnology

Programming at the atomic and molecular level to control materials

These challenges put the Abelson/Sussman thesis in perspective : It' s all about controlling complex processes

What about "A Theory of Everything?"

A misnomer. If created, which I doubt it will be, it would be nothing more than a theory of the currently known physical microcosm

Note that computer programming cannot be derived from it--but it can be derived from computer programming

Mathematica's Place in History

Mathematica is a scientific synthesis like those of Euclid, Spinoza, Newton, Locke, Lagrange, Hamilton, Darwin, Maxwell, Gibbs, Shannon, and others

"Everything is an expression"--a central unifying syntactic principle like energy in physics or bits in information theory

More Elements of the Mathematica Synthesis

General symbol manipulation program

Pattern matching engine

A variety of programming styles and devices

Axiomatization of lower-level functionality (Table, Map* family, Nest* family, etc.)

Interpret and compile modes

Interface/IDE\--the Front End Notebook

Plethora of built-in functions

Extension to all special functions via Mathematica Functions site

Extensive and growing graphics and visualization capabilities

Effectively unlimited notation synthesis

Equation solving

Numerical analysis/evaluation

Axiomatization of higher-level functionality (CellularAutomata, Manipulate, TuringMachine, etc.)

gridMathematica

Documentation Center

MathWorld

Presentation and documentation formats

webMathematica

Demonstrations site

Curated data/Data paclets

Incipient semantic net (WordData)

What is the goal of programming style?

Help manage ever-increasing complexity

Streamline the human-computer interface from both sides

A New Mathematica Programming Style

First principle: Replace all matchfix single argument function applications f [ arg ] with Prefix function applications f @ arg

Requires some knowledge of the 1000-level Precedence table

Second principle: Replace nested matchfix with Postfix + pure Function

Prefix Functional Syntax

Cleaner and more efficient than matchfix

Use prefix function application, @, for single-argument functions

Matchfix style:

f[ g[ h[ i [j] ] ] ]

Prefix style:

f @ g @ h @ i @ j

First two syntactical problems with list- or matchfix-based language

1. Humans have difficulty parsing deeply nested expressions (>3)
2. Humans are not regular expression parsers

Basic Benefits of Prefix style

Every pair of brackets we lose makes our expressions easier to read and understand

Every pair of brackets for which we don't have to type or move the cursor saves us time

A Prefix Style Example

Each @ tells us there is no complex nesting for that function, no options or arguments to look for, no brackets to match.

We can focus our attention on the functions that do use matchfix and identify their arguments and options.

There are fewer nested brackets to sort out.

Here's some code from Trott, The Mathematica Guide to Graphics, in matchfix and Prefix styles:

Show[GraphicsArray[

Block[{$DisplayFunction = Identity},

(* display absolute value of 2D Fourier transform *)

ListDensityPlot[Abs[Fourier[Table[1/#[i, j], {i, 256}, {j, 256}]]],

Mesh -> False, ColorFunction -> (Hue[0.8 #]&)]& /@

{GCD, LCM}]]]

Show@GraphicsArray@

Block[{$DisplayFunction = Identity},

(* display absolute value of 2D Fourier transform *)

ListDensityPlot[

Abs@Fourier@Table[1/#[i, j], {i, 256}, {j, 256}],

Mesh -> False, ColorFunction -> (Hue[0.8 #]&)]& /@

{GCD, LCM}]

More Prefix Style Examples

Basic Usages

One argument function definitions:

f[x_] := Sin[x]

f@x_ := Sin@x

One argument functions or assignments:

Log@100^100//N

2.11139*10^66

walk1D3@n_:= NestList[#+Random[Real,{-1,1}]&, Random[Real, {-1,1}],n];

walk1D3@10

{-0.206019, -0.914893, -0.951759, -1.04967, -0.299963, -0.8917, -0.147434, 0.764746, 1.57289, 1.40045, 2.13796}

list5 = Range@10;

Clear@list5;

Histogram@%

Histogram[Null]

Needs@"Combinatorica`"

Multiple one-argument function composition:

f@g@h@i@j@k

Sin[g[h[i[j[k]]]]]

First@Rest@Most@Range@10

Function definitions with lists as argument:

f@{a_, b_, c_}:= n@{a,b,c}

Precedence in Mathematica

The main objection to Prefix is that you have to know operator precedence

However this objection applies to all abbreviated operators (+, *, ^, [[ ]], { }, /@, etc.)

Mathematica is endowed with "a variety of special characters that greatly increase readability and elegance."

FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation; early and primitive, but elegant), Mathematica (an advanced synthesis):

A conscious effort was made to provide a path of least action or smooth transduction from mathematical notation to code

Further, a significant feature of V6 is the addition of 100 undefined operators to facilitate creating user-defined notations

I submit that if you use Prefix, you will use it more often than the most common abbreviated operators

Precedence directs the order of abbreviated operators' operation

Precedence can be symbolized by parenthetical grouping, such as: a + (b ^ c) versus (a + b) ^ c

The Mathematica reference on precedence in 5.2 was Table A.2.7, now is in tutorial / InputSyntax: Operator Input Forms

It lists all abbreviated operators in tables of decreasing precedence

However, a superior reference can be generated from a little code

There exists an undocumented function, Precedence

Voila:

Precedence@Prefix

640.

It is not Listable, but it should be! Either reset Attributes to Listable or just Map it:

Precedence /@ {Prefix, Factorial}

{640., 610.}

What happened in the previous slide?

Prefix is a little "stickier" than Factorial==@ sticks to n more than ! does--and so we got (IntegerDigits@n)! instead of IntegerDigits[ n! ]

When faced with a few abbreviated operators, map Precedence onto them in the order they present in your expression

a + b * c ^ d - e

Precedence /@ {Plus, Times, Minus, Power}

{310., 400., 480., 590.}

Precedence mnemonics: Think of operator "stickiness" or "binding strength"

Mathematica's 1000 - Level Precedence Table

Abbreviated Operators

This list includes all nondefined operators as of v8.0, about an increase of 60 more over v6.0. I include a few of a group of syntax operators that have Precedence = 670, such as Parentheses, Comma, and Subscript. These are which are referred to in the documentation as "structural operators."

abbreviatedOperators = {Operate, Through, Pi, I, Unset, Plus, N, Infinity, Tilde, Backtick, Level, Position, Alternatives, Repeated, RepeatedNull, Condition, Except, AddTo, PreIncrement, Increment, Decrement, PreDecrement, Map, MapAll, MapAt, MapThread, Apply, Factorial, Factorial2, Prefix, Postfix, Infix, MatchFix, Comma, Head, Part, PatternTest, Power, Function, Set, SetDelayed, Rule, RuleDelayed, TagSet, UpSet, Unset, Put, PutAppend, Append, PrependTo, AppendTo, Get, Overscript, Underscript, Subscript, Sum, Product, Coproduct, PartialD, DifferentialD, Integral, Cap, Cup, TimesBy, Replace, ReplaceAll, Colon, SemiColon, CompoundExpression, Therefore, Because, And, Or, Not, Element, ForAll, Exists, NotExists, Xor, Nand, Nor, SuchThat, Implies, RoundImplies, RightTee, LeftTee, DoubleRightTee, DoubleLeftTee, VerticalSeparator, Union, Intersection, Vee, Wedge, Backslash, Divide, PlusMinus, MinusPlus, CirclePlus, CircleMinus, Times, CircleTimes, CenterDot, Diamond, Star, NonCommutativeMultiply, Cross, Dot, D, Del, Square, SmallCircle, Integrate, Sqrt, Conjugate, Transpose, ConjugateTranspose, Derivative, StringJoin, Slot, SlotSequence, Out, In, Blank, BlankSequence, BlankNullSequence, Optional, Pattern, Default, MessageName, Piecewise, Symbol, String, Integer, Real, Complex, FullForm, Null, List, AngleBracket, Floor, Ceiling, BracketingBar, DoubleBracketingBar, Parentheses, Quote, DoubleQuote, Percent, SubtractFrom, DivideBy, Equal, Greater, Unequal, Less, LessEqual, SameQ, UnsameQ, Question, Underscore, Slash, FormBox, Hold, HoldPattern, "=*=", Conditioned, Distributed};

Length@abbreviatedOperators

165

After defining the table of Abbreviated Operators, this code generates the first formatted table that you see at the top of this post, listing them in descending order of Precedence.

$PrecedenceTable = {#, Precedence@#} & /@abbreviatedOperators // #[[Ordering@#[[All, 2]] ] ] & //Reverse // Partition[#, Length@#/4 // Floor] & //TableForm[#, TableDirections -> Row, TableSpacing -> {3, 1}] & //Style[#, Magnification -> 1] &

And this code generates the second formatted table that you see at the top of the next post, listing Abbreviated Operators alphabetically.

$PrecedenceTable = {#, Precedence@#} &/@ abbreviatedOperators // #[[Ordering@#[[All, 1]] ] ] & //Partition[#, Length@#/4 // Floor] & //TableForm[#, TableDirections -> Row, TableSpacing -> {3, 1}] & //Style[#, Magnification -> 1] &

How to Learn Mathematica: Fifth Assignment

Fifth Assignment: Search MathGroup

Spend 20 minutes searching and browsing the official Mathematica newsgroup, founded and maintained by Steve Christenson since the 1980s. MathGroup is as knowledgeable and informative as WRI Tech Support, and if free to boot. MathGroup's enthusiasm for Mathematica is contagious, but is ever-vigilant for bugs and faults. MathGroup is very friendly and helpful to newbies.

http://forums.wolfram.com/mathgroup/

How to Learn Mathematica: Fourth Assignment

A Mathematica Primer from the Documentation Center

The Documentation Center is Mathematica's comprehensive online help facility. Introduced in version 6, many experienced Mathematica users found it overwhelming. That is a good sign. The Documentation Center is an advanced version of what you might find for other languages or programming environments. There is information on the 4000 built-in functions, hundreds of tutorials, connections to Mathematica's Demonstrations database and to the Wolfram Research website, from which you can connect to the mathematical encyclopedia, MathWorld, the Functions site with over 70,000 functions in Mathematica code, the Mathematica Journal, and a myriad of other resources.

The Documentation Center ("Doc Center") and other resources are very well-organized. Related material is indicated for all topics and hyperlinked. The Doc Center is a browser and you can click Back to return to pages you have viewed in the current session. Context-sensitive Help is available by clicking the first function key, F1, no matter where you are (it defaults to Documentation Center Home).

You can enter any keywords in the search box at the top of the Doc Center and it will bring up a list of related topics. The search box automatically assumes you are using a wildcard at the end of any word or phrase. Further, there is an autocomplete/related terms feature that will suggest what you might have intended to be looking for.

There is an excellent collection of introductory reading material as well, and pouring through that is your next assignment in this book.

Fourth Assignment: Orientation in the Documentation Center ("Doc Center")

If it is not open already, open the Doc Center under the Help menu or by clicking F1 and then the Home icon. Take a look at the Getting Started Videos and Find Your Learning Path links at the top of the page.

Here are some tutorials on Mathematica basics. Choose one and copy and paste it into the Search box at the top of the Doc Center window.

The Four Kinds of Bracketing in Mathematica

The Meaning Of Expressions

Everything Is An Expression

Some General Notations and Conventions

Building Up Calculations Overview

Exact And Approximate Results

Scan this listing of Mathematica's menu, but over time, focus in on the commands that your interests require. Copy and paste it into the Doc Center Search box.

Menu Items

The Documentation Center is mirrored on the world wide web (see "URL" at top right of all Doc Center pages), but there is much more information on the web as well. When you search in the Doc Center, you are offered a link to results from Wolfram websites. And here is a very handy Wolfram site search engine with an alphabetical listing of contents and a drop-down menu of specific sites to search. It's fun to peruse as well as search.

http://reference.wolfram.com/alphaindex/A.html

Exercises

1. In the Doc Center, do a general search using five keywords about the topics you'd most like to read about.

2. To find a built-in function versus all topics related to its name, we capitalize it. Search "list", review the topics that return, and then search "List", which will take you to the built-in function page on Mathematica's pervasive data structure, the List.

3. In a Notebook, type ?List* to bring up all built-in functions beginning with "List...". Click on "List". Then click on the double arrows at the end of the blurb on List for more information, which should take you to List in the Doc Center.

4. Go to http://reference.wolfram.com/alphaindex/A.html. Pick a letter and peruse the listings in its section. Then choose a specific site from the drop-down menu and search for something of interest to you.

How to Learn Mathematica: Third Assignment

Third Assignment: Keyboard Shortcuts in Notebooks

You'll find some of these to be very handy. Some general tips:

Control + spacebar gets you out of special symbols and back to the normal keyboard.

Shift + F1 opens a new Doc Center window, leaving any existing ones open.

Review these tutorials:

1. guide/NotebookShortcuts

2. tutorial/KeyboardShortcutListing

3. guide/SelectingAndTypingInNotebooks

How to Learn Mathematica: Second Assignment

Second Assignment: Notebooks

Mathematica consists of a Kernel, which is the name for the central processing engine that you don't see, and the Notebook, or Notebook Front End, which is the typical user interface to the Kernel. The Notebook, created by Theodore Gray (http://theodoregray.com/), is a highly developed and unique graphical user interface (GUI), like the interface to Unix, Windows, Macintosh, or any common browser, especially Google Chrome. You need to acquire some familiarity with the basic symbols and operations in the Notebook to operate Mathematica and access its universe of functionality.

Here is an excellent introduction to Mathematica Notebooks:

guide/NotebookBasics

This tutorial explains basic Notebook formatting, which resembles style sheets in a word processor:

tutorial/NotebooksAsDocuments

Exercises

1. Try each function in this guide: guide/SelectingAndTypingInNotebooks.

2. Try each Notebook shortcut in this guide: guide/NotebookShortcuts.

3. Scan this: guide/NotebookFormattingAndStyling

How to Learn Mathematica

Typically, to learn a new application program in 40 hours, you might be advised to work your way through the menu and toolbars of commands to familiarize yourself with available functions. While to learn a new programming language, you would be told to take a straightforward problem to solve, and write a program to solve it using only those functions that you needed.

Mathematica contains perhaps the most extensive programming language extant, with over 4000 built-in general-purpose functions and an auxiliary website with over 300,000 additional mathematical functions.Mathematica's programming environment, affectionately called the Front End, is so user-friendly that it's similar to an application program like Word or Excel. We advocate learning Mathematica in the style of the "need to know" basis used for programming languages, using guidance from books such as this one.

Names@"*" // Length

4187

How to Learn Mathematica: First Assignment

First Assignment: Getting Oriented

Take a look at these resources to get you started and to give you a glimpse of the breadth of Mathematica:

http://www.wolfram.com/support/learn/

tutorial/GettingUsedToMathematica

guide/AlphabeticalListing

guide/NewIn80AlphabeticalListing

http://www.wolfram.com/webresources.html

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

http://functions.wolfram.com/

http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/

How to Use this Book

The Universe (or Multi-verse) is an exceedingly interesting place. And Mathematica is an exceedingly interesting part of the Universe. It has enough consistency and richness to be thought of as a domain unto itself to explore, like quantum physics, the early universe, molecular genetics, neural circuits, or evolution. And if you enjoy mathematics, Mathematica itself is a region of pure mathematics. It is a synthesis of pure mathematics and "best practices" acquired to date in our understanding of programming.

If you get to the point of mastering part of Mathematica, you will find that your ability to articulate questions, explore answers, and write up your results in that area to be so enhanced as to be exhilirating.

The Beginning of Your Mathematica Journey

One way or the other, most readers will share our goal: to learn just what they need in Mathematica in the shortest possible time. Often the newcomer debates the trade-off of beginning a new project in a familiar programming language versus facing the learning curve in a new language that may be superior for the work in the long run. A more intimidating trade-off is presented when a substantial amount of time has already been invested in writing a program in a language and one considers re-writing it in the new language.

I sympathize deeply with these concerns. But I would suggest that moving toward a higher-level programming language is a solid choice--like investing money rather than spending it. Because after a period of investment in learning the language, you will experience not only the joy and power of getting more done in less time, but also of having more control and conceiving your programs at a higher level. That value is inestimable.

Second, you might consider what I once heard a very experienced programmer say in an Object-Oriented Programming course: "Program for a month or two, and then re-consider the organization of your program and throw your rough draft away. You'll more than make up the time with a superior architecture and rather than struggling with one sand trap after another, glide through the fairways with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight." That remark applies to moving from a lower-level language to a higher-level one.

This book focuses on programming in Mathematica, but Mathematica is much, much more than a powerful programming language--it is a scientific computing environment. I predict it will grow in useful functionality quicker than any of us can keep up with it.

Introduction to my Mathematica guide: The Way of Mathematica

Greetings! Several years ago I began creating a guide to Mathematica for my own use--as a reference to what I wanted to learn and remember, especially about Mathematica programming. I also wanted to capture a philosophy about Mathematica, like the Tao--as in the Tao Teh Ching--or Way of Mathematica. How does one 'go with the flow' when programming in Mathematica? It evolved into a book and here I'm posting drafts from the book. Please keep in mind these are drafts and may contain errors or omissions. Of course I'm very interested in your comments and corrections.

One device I use that you may not like is capitalizing Mathematica functions, such as Map or Import, as proper nouns. The idea is to highlight them and impress them on our minds. However I can also see that this usage can be irritating--if so let me know.

More significantly, I use a new programming dialect that I first presented at the Wolfram Technology Conference in 2007--you can download the presentation here:

http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/Conferences/7002/

This dialect, which features heavy usage of Prefix (f@x) and Postfix (x//f) syntax with pure Function (x//f [#, {parameters}]&, offers a number of significant advantages over the traditional Matchfix style. Specifically, these benefits include:

1. Code is more readable
2. We have less typing because we finally depart from the confusing matching brackets f[[[parameter1, g[parameter2], h[parameter3]]]] syntax that goes at least as far back as Lisp
3. Functions are listed in the order in which they are applied as in procedural programming
4. We have more options to organize our code so as to highlight what's important and bury what is not.

We can think of this dialect as a "functional-procedural fusion" and I haven't come up with a better name for it than that. Accordingly another benefit is that the syntax renders Mathematica easier to learn for procedural programmers. Schematically it looks like this:

Traditional Matchfix	h [ g [ f [ x, y ], z ], j ]
Postfix-Pure Function	f [ x, y ] // g [ #, z ]& // h [#, j ]&
Prefix	f @ g @ h @ i

Using Prefix and Postfix with abbreviated operators (such as +, -, x, /, ^, as in f@x+5) necessitates knowing Mathematica's Precedence table, included in the 2007 presentation and I will post the code and table for Mathematica 8 here. You can always determine the Precedence of any operators using that undocumented function:

In[68]:= Precedence /@ {Plus, Subtract, Times, Divide, Power}

Out[68]= {310., 310., 400., 470., 590.}

And you can always just use Matchfix, or group with parentheses, if you don't want to deal with Precedence. Of course we all deal with Precedence, and few would advise abolishing all abbreviated operator usage, in mathematics and Mathematica. So think of Prefix in Mathematica as a greatly extended usage of the power of abbreviated operators that harks to the origins of math.

http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/ref/Prefix.html

http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/ref/Postfix.html