I forgot: Of course I work with the newest version 11.2.0.0 (Windows 10, 64-bit)

All in all for me the Wolfram product structure is very confusing and "over-marketed". There are so many different products with different options each (online, desktop, local, cloud, credits, API-calls, storage, kernels, computing time, ....).

It's really difficult to get to reasonable work, instead of investigating what is what.

Why not Mathematica Home edition? Just call the german dealer. I do not sell Mathematica, but if you want you can also call me.

Home Edition is the "true" standalone desktop version, not Cloud depending. For private use, and at a substantial discount. Searching for it on this site gives:

Edit: I checked the pricing. Mathematica Home Edition is actually cheaper than Programming Lab Standard. For one year, respectively:

• 240 EUR for Programming Lab Standard
• 155 EUR for Mathematica Home Edition

So if you are not using WL in a commercial context, it looks like the Home Edition is the better bet. With regards to both performance and price.

There is no way of using PL locally. With my standard license it insists in storing everything within the Wolfram cloud.

This standard license costs are 240 EUR per year, it has a local desktop, but still forces me into the cloud for storage. Without any chance to escape from that.

I could update to a premium license for the double cost. This license claims to allow for local files. This is horribly expensive for a programming-hobby and I don't believe that I could get rid of that useless Wolfram cloud with such a license.

BTW: There are more things, which are very strange and prove that the Wolfram programmers are unable to handle their IDE: (I am still talking about WL-Programming Lab-Desktop).

The whole startup is a joke. Nonsense-windows that have to be opened until I get to my program (described elsewhere).

In each notebook I have File-Options "Save" and "Save to Cloud" which obviously do the same. Or not? Who knows?

I save a notebook and then close it. Then I am asked, if I want to save it again. Horrible! What happens? But I have no chance but saying Yes and pray, that the IDE will not kill my program.

I have no real idea what is saved where.

I assume that nothing is stored or replicated to my own PC. They keep me fully dependent on their cloud. And like to kill my programs thereby - see above. Although they claim to give me with that heavily payed desktop-license the possibility to develop locally.

Sometimes the UI just freezes. No idea when and why.

I love the Wolfram Language. This is really impressive and very intelligent what can be done with it.

Strange enough the IDE is anything else than intelligent. It is stupid and filled with bugs.

It is possible to push the limits of Notebooks as data containers. I had similar problems years ago, but have instinctually learned to avoid them. It can be very distressing when the only copy of an important notebook becomes unreadable. Backups are your particular responsibility, since the front end does not have file recovery, for example, like MS Office.

Also, you might avoid similar problems in the future by deleting all output before saving your notebooks at the end of a session, to the cloud or elsewhere.

There are threads elsewhere in the old Mathematica mailing list, on Stack Exchange, and probably in this Community that discuss methods for persistent notebook data.

Vince

You say, I should delete all output before saving. OK, but how? Manually? Tens or Hundreds of outputs, one after the other by manually deleting all those output cells? Or ist there a command for that? I could not find something like that.

Desktop FrontEnd Menu "Cell > Delete All Output". Keyboard shortcut Alt+c,l ('el')

@Moderation Team: Wolfram support could not help. I come back with that problem to help others avoiding this kind of disaster.

Now I have exactly the same problem again with another notebook. I think I understand now what happens. The notebook produces some large amount of data - say a list or array with some millions of elements - and outputs this in Short-form. For example Print[Short[list]].

I do always a ClearAll["Global`*"] before saving the notebook into the cloud. Hoping to reduce its size. But this is not sufficient, since the output stays within the notebook and when saved, it is not saved in Short-form but in full-form, which makes the save huge (say some 20 MB or larger, not really huge). It takes some time, and then - very strange - the notebook can not be reopened since Wolfram claims the syntax error described above.

For me this is a horrible bug.

To get around it I now always introduce a parameter controlling the size of the problem. In this example the list-Length. Before saving I reduce that parameter from said some millions to 10 or so, run the complete code, do the ClearAll and save. Then the save gets really small and can be reopened.

(Probably the ClearAll is not necessary at all. One has just to avoid large outputs within the notebook, even if displayed in Short-form only).

BTW: I think this idea of storing things within internet-clouds instead of locally and without a local copy in 1:1 structure is some of the biggest nonsense that IT-people invented during the last 10 years or so. It started on smartphones with nonsense-terms like "photos, music, videos, documents, hubs" etc. and propagated to PCs meanwhile. Nobody knows anymore since then what is stored where and when and under which exact name and which file attributes. And what is replicated where and if at all. Actually all those are just files within some directory-structure. Vendors try everything to hide that from customers since then.

This is particularly true for a product like Wolfram Programming Lab Desktop, which is aimed to allow for local development, but cannot live an hour without an online connection to the Wolfram cloud. And then - to make things a desaster - just destroys files in their cloud.

If I imagine, I would have to develop a huge program (as I did for tenths of years in many different IDEs) with such an IDE with hundreds of files and some tricky directory structure, I think it would be a real nightmare.