Wolfram Computation Meets Knowledge

News, Views & Insights

Date Archive: 2019 June

Education & Academic

Easter Eggs in Plain Sight, Climate Change Challenges and Knitted Images: Wolfram Community Highlights

Wolfram Community is our favorite, continually growing forum to share and show support for projects using the Wolfram Language, connect with other Mathematica aficionados and find solutions for coding questions. It's also a great platform for sharing computational innovations that can benefit your local community—or beyond. We've collected some of the exciting ways Wolfram Community members have been giving back through Wolfram technology—check them out!

Chapin Langenheim, Editor & Web Project Coordinator, Project Management
Current Events & History

Creating an Animated Historical Map Function for the Wolfram Function Repository

Mapping an Ancient Empire

Geocomputation is an indispensable modern tool for analyzing and viewing large-scale data such as population demographics, natural features and political borders. And if you’ve read some of my other posts, you can probably tell that I like working with maps. Recently, a Wolfram Community member asked:

“How do I make an interactive map of the Byzantine Empire through the years?”

To figure out a solution, we'll tap into the Wolfram Knowledgebase for some historical entities, as well as some of the high-level geocomputation and visualizations of the Wolfram Language. Once we’ve created our brand-new function, we’ll submit it to the Wolfram Function Repository for anyone to use.

Brian Wood, Technical Communications & Outreach Manager
Announcements & Events

The Wolfram Function Repository: Launching an Open Platform for Extending the Wolfram Language

What the Wolfram Language Makes Possible

We’re on an exciting path these days with the Wolfram Language. Just three weeks ago we launched the Free Wolfram Engine for Developers to help people integrate the Wolfram Language into large-scale software projects. Now, today, we’re launching the Wolfram Function Repository to provide an organized platform for functions that are built to extend the Wolfram Language---and we’re opening up the Function Repository for anyone to contribute.

The Wolfram Function Repository is something that's made possible by the unique nature of the Wolfram Language as not just a programming language, but a full-scale computational language. In a traditional programming language, adding significant new functionality typically involves building whole libraries, which may or may not work together. But in the Wolfram Language, there's so much already built into the language that it's possible to add significant functionality just by introducing individual new functions---which can immediately integrate into the coherent design of the whole language.

To get it started, we've already got 532 functions in the Wolfram Function Repository, in 26 categories:

Stephen Wolfram
Best of Blog

How I Built a Virtual Piano with the Wolfram Language and the Unity Game Engine

You know what’s harder than learning the piano? Learning the piano without a piano, and without any knowledge of music theory. For me, acquiring a real piano was out of the question; I had neither the funds nor space in my small college apartment. So naturally, it looked like I would have to build one myself—digitally, of course. And luckily, I had Mathematica, Unity and a few hours to spare. Because working in Unity is incredibly quick and efficient with the Wolfram Language and UnityLink, I’ve created a playable section of piano, and even learned a bit of music theory in the process.

Alec Shedelbower, Kernel Developer, Algorithms R&D