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adiuson If AI writes your code, why use Python?

LLMs are now smart enough to simply download the code of any project they want to inspect. So this argument doesn't really hold up anymore …

adiuson Show HN: Coding-Flashcards – Learn Rust, SQLite, or Godot from First Principles

Thanks! I'm using [Anki Panky](https://github.com/kamalsacranie/anki-panky) for generating the flashcards and then [Anki](https://apps.ankiweb.net/) itself for learning them.

adiuson Taguar – Desktop app for audio tagging

I tried out numerous audio tagging apps (Kid3, Picard, …) and wasn't happy with any of them. They all try to work with some kind of library system of have a really bad UX (single line input for Lyrics???).

Therefore I decided to build one that is simple, fast, with great defaults: https://github.com/ad-si/Taguar

It's built with Rust's [Iced] and [lofty].

Looking forward to your feedback!

[Iced]: https://iced.rs [lofty]: https://github.com/Serial-ATA/lofty-rs

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

Not yet, but on the roadmap!

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

Mh, I thought about this a little and came actually to exactly the opposite conclusion: Implement as much as possible in Rust to get the fastest code possible. Do you have any more insights why this should not be possible / unsustainable?

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

Why should I want them to use it?

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

Yeah, I've already looked into it, but decided to keep developing it "example driven" for now. Aka I'm playing around with it, and whenever I find something that's broken I keep a note of it and then I pick those notes one by one and implement them. Once the most common things are implemented I will start writing property tests to catch all the edge cases of each feature.

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

They rebranded it to Wolfram Language a few years ago (which I actually appreciate, as it is so much more than just "math" by now!)

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2013/02/what-should-we-c...

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

Oh cool, haven't heard of this before. Could be a good fit - I'll have to try it out some day!

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

I think Wolfram Language is just so much more ergonomic. No need to import dependencies - everything's included and consistent, very readable - yet compact - syntax, less gotchas than Python, R, etc., sensible default, …

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

Hard to tell honestly. So far there was always some surprisingly straight forward solution If had any problems with the math engine. There is actually a lot of public research how equations can be solved/simplified with computer algorithms. So I'm optimistic. I also stumbled upon a few cases where Mathematica itself didn't quite do things correctly itself (rounding errors, missing simplifications, etc.). So maybe it's actually a little overhyped …

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

It's having ~ 5000 tests already. Used correctly, AI agents can help you improve the quality of the code!

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

Such a massive undertaking would be almost impossible without AI agents, so yeah, they help me. But with around 5000 tests, they are actually helping to improve the software quality!

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Development_Corp._v._Bor...., a software clone does not infringe software copyright. So yeah, I'd guess sooner or later everything is going be cloned …

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

Exactly! And:

- Faster startup time because of no license check

- Can run multiple instances of Woxi at the same time

- Embeddable via WASM

- Configurable via compile time flags (which features should be included)

- …

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

That's actually a value that Wolfram determines themselves. Here is the documentation for it: https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/WolframLanguageDa...

Here is e.g. all the values for the Plus[] function:

$ wolframscript -code 'WolframLanguageData["Plus", "Ranks"]' {All -> 6, StackExchange -> 8, TypicalNotebookInputs -> 5, TypicalProductionCode -> 6, WolframAlphaCodebase -> 6, WolframDemonstrations -> 4, WolframDocumentation -> 4}

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

Sure, but you've got to start somewhere! And with the amount of progress I was able to make in just a few weeks, I'm very optimistic that the polish will come sooner rather than later.

adiuson Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust

Hi, I'm the main developer. We're steadily getting closer to the next release which will support most features of Mathematica 1.0 plus some of the most popular newer functions (> 900 overall!). AMA!

adiuson Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

Yes, definitely! This is one of Mathematica’s hallmark features and it would not be complete without it.

adiuson Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

https://github.com/ad-si/Woxi

adiuson Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

Yes, we agree that a lot of the value comes from the huge standard library. That's why we try to implement as much of it as possible. Right now we support more than 900 functions. All the Data functions will be a little more complicated of course, but they could e.g make a request to online data archives (ourworldindata.org, wikidata.org, …). So I think it's definitely doable.

We also want to provide an option for users to add their own functions to the standard library. So if they e.g. need `FinancialData[]` they could implement it themselves and provide it as a standard library function.

adiuson Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

Yes, definitely! So we also try to implement as much of it as possible. Currently we support over 900 functions of the 6000 from Mathematica!

adiuson Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

I also think that sandboxing is crucial. That’s why I’m working on a Wolfram Language interpreter that can be run fully sandboxed via WebAssembly: https://github.com/ad-si/Woxi

adiuson Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems

I agree, but to be truly foundational, it needs to be open source and accessible for everyone!

That’s why I’m working on an open source implementation of Mathematica (i.e. an Wolfram Language interpreter):

https://github.com/ad-si/Woxi

adiuson Light Mode InFFFFFFlation

I use light mode during the day and dark mode in the evening, with the OS switching automatically based on the sun’s position.

To me, this seems like the obvious way to decide when to use dark mode, but apparently I’m in a very small minority.

adiuson Ask HN: Share your personal website

https://adriansieber.com

adiuson GNU recutils: Plain text database

As a similar, yet more powerful data format I started using Nickel (https://nickel-lang.org). It has very sophisticated typing and transformation features. Highly recommended!

adiuson Wolfram Compute Services

Yes agreed! I already started implementing it for some subset. Hope to get it finished soon.

adiuson Wolfram Compute Services

With all the integrated standard functions Mathematica is such an incredible tool. We really need an open source version of it. Even if we implement only 10% of the features it would be already incredible useful.

I started working on an implementation in Rust called Woxi (https://github.com/ad-si/Woxi) and I hope to find some contributors, as it is such a gargantuan task!