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This thread is used for opinion and usage polls around Wolfram Mathematica. The poll questions are added as answers to this question. The choices for each specific poll can be found as comments below them. To participate simply up-vote the comments which apply for you. If there is no suitable answer yet simply add it as comment by yourself. You can't up-vote your own comments but the comment author will be counted manually. Please do not add any other comments to these posts. General comments can be added under this question.

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8 Answers 8

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18

If you are active in this community, it may be presumed you love Mathematica. But even so there are bound to be some features that irritate you. What are they?

If you don't see something that irritates you on the list, please feel free to add it.

10
  • 27
    The front end's so-called undo feature
    – m_goldberg
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 9:53
  • 37
    Missing or incomplete documentation for certain features, e.g. Method options
    – Simon Woods
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 11:48
  • 14
    No auto-completion for options when they are strings.
    – m_goldberg
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 12:21
  • 16
    Long lasting bugs.
    – xslittlegrass
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 17:20
  • 14
    The occasional surge in memory usage leading to a fully crippled system.
    – Sjoerd C. de Vries
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 20:20
  • 13
    User-unfriendly way to specify Ticks and FrameTicks.
    – Alexey Popkov
    Commented May 27, 2014 at 5:26
  • 3
    There are too many options with unintuitive default values.
    – Kuba
    Commented May 28, 2014 at 11:56
  • 21
    The inabilty to shut a calculation down reliably. Abort evaluation just does not do the job.
    – bobbym
    Commented May 30, 2014 at 18:41
  • 4
    That pressing Ctrl+S in a notebook with large output (e.g. videos, lots of images) will hang for several minutes, than crash, and I'll have lost both my unsaved work and the previously saved version. Couldn't MMA save the output cells to a separate file? Or at least back up the original file before overwriting it?
    – Niki Estner
    Commented Jun 6, 2014 at 7:27
  • It irritates me that pressing CTRL-C with nothing selected erases the clipboard. (Windows Mathematica 10.0.2).
    – Gustavo Delfino
    Commented Mar 10, 2015 at 12:22
16

The Mathematica way of distributing code are notebooks and packages. While notebooks are often used for everyday work, prototyping and testing, packages are more for distributing/storing functions so that they can easily be loaded for later use. How often do you write packages?

4
  • 9
    I never wrote a package by myself. I only use notebooks for my work.
    – halirutan
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 0:40
  • 24
    I have written a package once or twice, but in general I stick to notebooks.
    – halirutan
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 1:33
  • 19
    I write packages regularly.
    – halirutan
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 1:34
  • 1
    1 package that I use everyday.
    – bobbym
    Commented May 30, 2014 at 18:35
14

Do you use any other editor or IDE other than the Mathematica front end to write code, especially for package development?

7
  • 36
    I always use the Mathematica front end.
    – halirutan
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 0:16
  • 10
    I use the Wolfram Workbench for package development.
    – halirutan
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 0:18
  • 7
    I use the Mathematica plugin for IntelliJ IDEA for package development.
    – halirutan
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 0:19
  • 13
    I mostly use the Mathematica front end, but I occasionally sneak into a text-based code editor to do editing -- such as regex search and replace -- that is hard or impossible to do in the front end.
    – m_goldberg
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 1:16
  • 5
    I use the Wolfram Workbench as a plug-in to a later version of Eclipse .
    – Verbeia Mod
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 2:31
  • 7
    I use a plain text editor (not a project-based IDE), such as Vim, SublimeText, Notepad++ etc.
    – Szabolcs
    Commented May 28, 2014 at 16:55
  • I use Wolfram Workbench only for package testing.
    – Gustavo Delfino
    Commented Mar 10, 2015 at 12:26
13

Today, Mathematica is available for the three big operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. On which operating system do you use Mathematica?

3
  • 32
    I use Windows as operating system.
    – halirutan
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 1:48
  • 30
    I use Mac OS X as operating system.
    – halirutan
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 1:48
  • 16
    I use Linux as operating system.
    – halirutan
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 1:48
11

In what setting do you primarily use Mathematica?

4
  • 26
    As a researcher in academia.
    – C. E. Mod
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 16:29
  • 17
    For a job outside academia.
    – C. E. Mod
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 16:29
  • 8
    As a university student.
    – C. E. Mod
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 16:30
  • 23
    At home as a hobby.
    – C. E. Mod
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 16:30
10

How would you describe Mathematica usage in your working environment?

8
  • 6
    We have a site license and everybody is using it
    – Sjoerd C. de Vries
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 20:41
  • 9
    I am the only user and I have to fight to prolong my Premier Service License
    – Sjoerd C. de Vries
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 20:42
  • 13
    A couple of guys are using it, but it's mostly Matlab/Python/C++ etc.
    – Sjoerd C. de Vries
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 20:45
  • 5
    Nobody is using it, except for me and I have a home use license.
    – Sjoerd C. de Vries
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 20:46
  • 2
    A few people are using it now, but usage is growing across different areas.
    – Verbeia Mod
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 22:47
  • 2
    If one would mention Mathematica to my coworkers, their response would be "Mathe-WHAT??"
    – VividD
    Commented May 27, 2014 at 7:17
  • 1
    We have a site license but I'm the only one whose job is based on working with MMA.
    – Kuba
    Commented May 28, 2014 at 11:34
  • I am the only one developing in Mathematica, but there a several users of the resulting CDF files.
    – Gustavo Delfino
    Commented Mar 10, 2015 at 12:31
10

What do you use Mathematica mostly for?

12
  • 4
    As a calculator.
    – xslittlegrass
    Commented May 27, 2014 at 0:02
  • 4
    High performance computing.
    – xslittlegrass
    Commented May 27, 2014 at 0:03
  • 21
    Symbolic math .
    – xslittlegrass
    Commented May 27, 2014 at 0:03
  • 7
    Image Processing & Analysis.
    – xslittlegrass
    Commented May 27, 2014 at 0:04
  • 35
    Data processing & visualisation.
    – Sjoerd C. de Vries
    Commented May 27, 2014 at 5:47
  • 3
    Applications/games/GUIs, usually related to CDF format.
    – Kuba
    Commented May 28, 2014 at 11:31
  • 3
    Monte Carlo simulation
    – Sjoerd C. de Vries
    Commented May 28, 2014 at 17:00
  • 14
    Algorithm development & Prototyping
    – Sjoerd C. de Vries
    Commented May 28, 2014 at 17:02
  • 3
    Visualizing various interesting geometrical structures and relationships
    – m_goldberg
    Commented May 28, 2014 at 21:00
  • 1
    Modeling the behavior of living organisms (biological simulation)
    – m_goldberg
    Commented May 28, 2014 at 21:02
  • 6
    Engineering R&D
    – Yves Klett
    Commented May 29, 2014 at 20:59
  • 1
    graphics and graphic design
    – cormullion
    Commented Jul 13, 2014 at 8:17
9

Have you ever modified a Wolfram Research provided style sheet or written your own front end style sheet.

4
  • 19
    I have modified a Wolfram Research provided style sheet
    – m_goldberg
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 10:04
  • 4
    I have written my own style sheet
    – m_goldberg
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 10:04
  • 27
    I have neither modified nor written a style sheet
    – m_goldberg
    Commented May 26, 2014 at 10:05
  • I have modified the provided style sheets but only for very small changes like ShowGroupOpener->True
    – Gustavo Delfino
    Commented Mar 10, 2015 at 12:34

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