Here is more Mathematicana to celebrate Mathematica's 25th Anniversary. Thanks to my friend and intellectual complement John Deming ('you might be interested in this'), I was present at the creation, at least to hear, with growing excitement as I sat in Aiken 101 at Harvard in 1985, one of Stephen's early talks on the Symbolic Manipulation Program, SMP, which became Mathematica. I have it on good authority that none other than Steve Jobs, marketing genius extraordinaire, came up with the name Mathematica when Stephen solicited outside suggestions.
So here are pp 1-3 of my notes transcribed and an image. I'm sure I misunderstood some of the talk, so if in doubt check the SMP Handbook, a fascinating bit of history itself. Regarding the note that SMP was "written in 120K lines of C" as of the date of the talk, in this period Stephen could write up to 1000 lines of C code in a day.
298(85)/3/11 15:30
Harvard, Aiken 101
Dr. S. Wolfram
Arithmetic, logarithms - now hardware is powerful enough to do math generally. We need a language. Needs to be general, interactive, extensible, efficient (able to do heavy duty problems), portable (able to run without change on many computers).
Intrinsic data types: numbers, arrays of numbers. But need types for higher level objects, too, algorithms for them, and symbolic manipulation of them. An intrinsic structure to deal with these.
SMP. Symbolic Manipulation Program, which I started 5 years ago. Now it's 120K lines of C code later. SMP contains the core of a fundamental mathematical language; plus programmability allowing definitions of new objects; graphics; and a [functions] library.
The basic objects are numbers; symbols such as "a", "Pi"; projections i.e. parts of objects; and lists to specify collections of objects. Assignment of symbols to "values". You specify specific values then add more general expressions or values to which the machine goes if the specific values do not apply.
Conditions: $a_ = (test) to say $a such that (test) is true.
[Handles] multigeneric functions such as the gamma function. [Piecewise functions? But I'm not sure I got this right-KWC]
$$x stands for sequence of expressions.
It's important to have well-defined rules for pattern-matching. [SMP] will pattern-match even when not asked to solve explicit mathematical functions.
: immediate assignment
:: delayed assignment
[Uses?] the Frobenius method of series expansion of differential equations. Total differential equations. XDSol J Greif & SW [Caltech?] Oct 1981.
Euler-Mascheroni constant.
Hypergeometric functions are very difficult to evaluate. Often evaluates to yield no value. Factorization: [uses the] fastest code written (as opposed to Berlekamp's). Integration: Risch etc algorithms.
Canonical form used for simplification. Applies the chain rule to reduce and solve differential equations.
Manipulates expressions: as trees, graphically.
List Operations: APL + symbolic operations etc.
Lends itself to building up programs instinctively, because symbolic language, unlike numerical languages (C?)...
Strongly based on pattern-matching. explicit assignment of cases [i.e. piecewise functions] is more natural and better for mathematics than a series of if-then functions.
User can define input & output syntax
Code generation: Convert SMP to C or FORTRAN for numerical cases: compile & load code incorporated; and add intrinsic code to SMP.
Written in 120K lines of C, runs under UNIX, VMS, VM...
Multi-n-ary tree internal data structure
Memory management
sub-expression sharing mechanisms
compacting garbage collection
-> intermediate expressions > ~16Mb
Block transfer.
Pp 4-5 of the notes are here and contain some fascinating insights into the principles guiding Mathematica's development to this day and beyond.
So here are pp 1-3 of my notes transcribed and an image. I'm sure I misunderstood some of the talk, so if in doubt check the SMP Handbook, a fascinating bit of history itself. Regarding the note that SMP was "written in 120K lines of C" as of the date of the talk, in this period Stephen could write up to 1000 lines of C code in a day.
298(85)/3/11 15:30
Harvard, Aiken 101
Dr. S. Wolfram
Arithmetic, logarithms - now hardware is powerful enough to do math generally. We need a language. Needs to be general, interactive, extensible, efficient (able to do heavy duty problems), portable (able to run without change on many computers).
Intrinsic data types: numbers, arrays of numbers. But need types for higher level objects, too, algorithms for them, and symbolic manipulation of them. An intrinsic structure to deal with these.
SMP. Symbolic Manipulation Program, which I started 5 years ago. Now it's 120K lines of C code later. SMP contains the core of a fundamental mathematical language; plus programmability allowing definitions of new objects; graphics; and a [functions] library.
The basic objects are numbers; symbols such as "a", "Pi"; projections i.e. parts of objects; and lists to specify collections of objects. Assignment of symbols to "values". You specify specific values then add more general expressions or values to which the machine goes if the specific values do not apply.
Conditions: $a_ = (test) to say $a such that (test) is true.
[Handles] multigeneric functions such as the gamma function. [Piecewise functions? But I'm not sure I got this right-KWC]
$$x stands for sequence of expressions.
It's important to have well-defined rules for pattern-matching. [SMP] will pattern-match even when not asked to solve explicit mathematical functions.
: immediate assignment
:: delayed assignment
[Uses?] the Frobenius method of series expansion of differential equations. Total differential equations. XDSol J Greif & SW [Caltech?] Oct 1981.
Euler-Mascheroni constant.
Hypergeometric functions are very difficult to evaluate. Often evaluates to yield no value. Factorization: [uses the] fastest code written (as opposed to Berlekamp's). Integration: Risch etc algorithms.
Canonical form used for simplification. Applies the chain rule to reduce and solve differential equations.
Manipulates expressions: as trees, graphically.
List Operations: APL + symbolic operations etc.
Lends itself to building up programs instinctively, because symbolic language, unlike numerical languages (C?)...
Strongly based on pattern-matching. explicit assignment of cases [i.e. piecewise functions] is more natural and better for mathematics than a series of if-then functions.
User can define input & output syntax
Code generation: Convert SMP to C or FORTRAN for numerical cases: compile & load code incorporated; and add intrinsic code to SMP.
Written in 120K lines of C, runs under UNIX, VMS, VM...
Multi-n-ary tree internal data structure
Memory management
sub-expression sharing mechanisms
compacting garbage collection
-> intermediate expressions > ~16Mb
Block transfer.
Pp 4-5 of the notes are here and contain some fascinating insights into the principles guiding Mathematica's development to this day and beyond.
No comments:
Post a Comment