News, Views & Insights
Last week it was 34 years since the original launch of Mathematica and what’s now the Wolfram Language. And through all those years we’ve energetically continued building further and further, adding ever more capabilities, and steadily extending the domain of the computational paradigm.
In recent years we’ve established something of a rhythm, delivering the fruits of our development efforts roughly twice a year. We released Version 13.0 on December 13, 2021. And now, roughly six months later, we’re releasing Version 13.1. As usual, even though it’s a “.1” release, it’s got a lot of new (and updated) functionality, some of which we’ve worked on for many years but finally now brought to fruition.
Just a few weeks ago it was 1/3 of a century since Mathematica 1.0 was released. Today I’m excited to announce the latest results of our long-running R&D pipeline: Version 13 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica. (Yes, the 1, 3 theme—complete with the fact that it’s the 13th of the month today—is amusing, if coincidental.)
It’s 207 days—or a little over 6 months—since we released Version 12.3. And I’m pleased to say that in that short time an impressive amount of R&D has come to fruition: not only a total of 117 completely new functions, but also many hundreds of updated and upgraded functions, several thousand bug fixes and small enhancements, and a host of new ideas to make the system ever easier and smoother to use.
Every day, every week, every month for the past third of a century we’ve been pushing hard to add more to the vast integrated framework that is Mathematica and the Wolfram Language. And now we can see the results of all those individual ideas and projects and pieces of work: a steady drumbeat of innovation sustained now over the course of more than a third of a century:
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It’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this for 35 years, building a taller and taller tower of ideas and technology that allow us to reach ever further. In earlier times we used to release the results of efforts only every few years. But in recent times we’ve started doing incremental (“.1”) releases that deliver our latest R&D achievements—both fully fleshed out, and partly as “coming attractions”—much more frequently.
We released Version 12.2 on December 16, 2020. And today, just five months later, we’re releasing Version 12.3. There are some breakthroughs and major new directions in 12.3. But much of what’s in 12.3 is just about making Wolfram Language and Mathematica better, smoother and more convenient to use. Things are faster. More “But what about ___?” cases are handled. Big frameworks are more completely filled out. And there are lots of new conveniences.
There are also the first pieces of what will become large-scale structures in the future. Early functions—already highly useful in their own right—that will in future releases be pieces of major systemwide frameworks.
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