That's what I'm thinking. Can somebody answer this?

I don't know what The Programming Lab desktop is. Is this a Wolfram product? Possibly you could try BaseDirectory (with a dollar sign) instead of $UserBaseDirectory. Maybe the cloud but I find it too expensive and too complicated. I just exchange Mathematica applications with people who run them on their own desktop computer. I take the hard-nose position that if people want to run Mathematica they should have it. The idea of "Mathematica without Mathematica" has finally turned me off because it does not work well and lacks the full power of Mathematica. It's sort of like the professor gets to use the real Mathematica but the students don't.

The thing about an application is that it can have a folder structure that contains all kinds of things and only some of the folders might be distributed.

Just another thing is WolframAlpha. Of course this is not a programming environment but a "natural language knowledge engine", which it really is.

But I like to try out small WL-pieces within WA from my smartphone. WA knows some WL-functions or similar constructs (e.g. "Solve[...]" and "solve ..."), but not all of the WL-functions or only with restricted syntax. Since all WA-processing is done within Wolfram servers, I cannot understand that. And there is no reference documentation for WA. Hence each and every time you try something, its an endless process of trial and error.

Thanks David for your hints.

I think I am such a person. I read your "A Mathematica Style" and feel that it is very helpful although its a bit difficult to distinguish between literal file/directory names like "PublicFolders" and Meta-Names like "MySubjectMatter" (i suppose).

Until now I was not aware of the important role of $UserBaseDirectory/Applications and did not use it. I will try that and see if my Programming Lab can work with local files there.

I use Wolfram Programming Lab (WPL, current version 10.2 on current Windows 10). I pay EUR 250, $307 per year for a standard license just for personal, non-commercial use. Very expensive.

WPL is another non-understandable product. When I started with Wolfram two years ago, I was totally confused about the product suite and did not know what to buy. (I am a mathematician and was a professional software developer and architect and used about two dozens of programming languages and IDEs: Algol, Fortran, PL/1, Cobol, Pascal, Prolog, Smalltalk, C, VBA, C++, Java, Matlab, etc. And then I was interested in Mathematicas symbolic formula processing). .
What I wanted was:

1. Full Mathematica / Wolfram Language Features.

2. Reasonable elevated UI.

3. Running on my local desktop. If necessary automatically escape to Wolfram Cloud services.

4. Store program files (notebooks and supporting files) locally within my personal directory structure.

5. Provide an internet UI to be independent of my locality.

6. Store all my local files within the Cloud. Actually I want to have them replicated automatically from local to cloud and vice versa..

7. Have a debugger.

I thought, WPL was the like and licensed it. Now I can say:

A. I got the points 1, 2, 3, 5

B. It does not store files locally - my point 4 - or at least only temporarily and somewhere I don't understand. Actually you cannot work reasonably with WPL without an internet connection. Funny enough the desktop has actions "Save" and "Save to Cloud", but they seem to be the same.

C.It stores files within the cloud - my point 6 - but only explicitly, not in some sense of two-way replication between my local file system and the cloud.

D. It has no debugger - my point 7. Which is a joke. I think you need the development platform and Eclipse for that.

Anyway I can do reasonable work with WPL, but I hate it to have all my files within some cloud structure only. And the worst, really horrible thing ist, that the cloud file system has incredible bugs:

Sometimes notebooks get just corrupted without any reason and have to be partly restored by some complicated process. Since some time I have a whole cloud-directory which suddenly became inaccessible from the desktop, but still work normally from the internet UI. Currently I cannot save notebooks from the desktop. It tells "there is a conflicting version in the cloud" and it cannot be replaced. I have to store it explicitly to the cloud as a new file.

Although I love the Wolfram Language and am deeply impressed by its endless capabilities, I think, the IDE (at least the WPL and its complete file handling) as well as the hole product structure is a nightmare.

Wolfram got lost in its plethora of products and can not even tell, what the differences are.

What do you mean by "hobbyist" license? Is this that Wolfram Home or the like? Just another dubious product with unknown features..

Do you think, it would cover my 7 points from above (maybe without point 7: debugger)? And I could live without my point 6: Replication local <-> (Wolfram-) cloud, since my Microsoft OneDrive is able to do that without any problems.

BTW: For some tens of years I have never seen an IDE without a debugger. The Wolfram-packages are the first to miss that standard feature. (Let aside that Eclipse plug-in. I know Eclipse and worked a lot with it). When I bought WPL I did not even think on the possibility that it does not have a debugger. It's really funny, or sad. Now I have to scatter my code with nonsense conditional Echo- and Print-statements. Just like 40 years ago at Algol or Fortran times.

"There is some debugging functionality built-in to Mathematica, but nothing like Xcode, for example."

What do you mean? I know nothing but Assert and Echo.

"However, Mathematica is not your basic programming language, so to think of it as an IDE may get you off into a black hole eventually. It took me a while to realize this, but once I realized what Wolfram Language really was, I do a lot better."

Hmmh? Why should Mathematica not be my basic programming language? And why should those different Wolfram-products not be IDEs?

Off course, if I would still work in my former professional environment I would need some more things than my seven points above: Teamwork, Connection to configuration management tools and testing tools for example. Maybe that's possible with the Wolfram Workbench and Eclipse.

Somebody (I think Jay Freeman) liked my post. I want to add my current state to that many years old discussion.

Meanwhile I dropped Programming Lab and switched to Wolfram|One (V13.0.1, 64bit, $263/year, Windows 10/11). This is a true desktop version with local files (which I synchronize automatically with my Microsoft OneDrive cloud). It solves almost all my former concerns, let aside debugging, which is still unusable (Debugger within Evaluation menu).

What I like the most with Wolfram is symbolic computation and notebooks. The latter are really great for doing programming and documentation at the same place.

Saying "Mathematica can be purchased outright" is perhaps overstating the situation: one is only buying a license, which without buying any further services, puts no time limit on using that particular version.

This is still as clear as mud!

What, exactly, is the difference between:

1. Mathematica with Premier Service Plus (which gives access to Mathematica Online), on the one hand; and
2. Wolfram|One, on the other hand?????

I'm not interested in the history, just what exactly, are the differences?

What do you mean by "base capabilities"? Does that mean the same functionality except with respect to commercial vs. non-commercial usage, cloud storage, cloud credits ( and what's that "etc")?

Yes, I know what "etc" is an abbreviation for!

Just to get at long last what will be -- I hope! -- a definitive, clear, and complete answer....

The only differences between Mathematica with Premier Plus Service, on the one hand, and Wolfram|One, on the other hand are with respect to licensing terms and limits (commercial vs. non-commercial use, number of kernels, evaluation time and space, storage, credits, etc.)?

If that's so, why on earth can't anybody simply say that?? Why make things so obscure and unclear??

Note that you have a genuine marketing problem if WRI cannot say simply, clearly, and unambiguously what differentiates its cloud-related products! Right not it does not.

It would be really useful to have a comparison page on the Wolfram site that lists Wolfram|One and Mathematica, the same way that I can compare a macBook Pro and an iMac on the Apple website.

Other than the fact that Wolfram|One is subscription only, I can see no difference in the products.

I notice that Stephen Wolfram seems to use Wolfram Desktop a lot in his presentations when he is talking about Mathematica, so as far as desktop functionality is concerned, there cannot be any difference.

When Wolfram|One was first released, I thought that it was a simple rebranding of Mathematica. After all, Mathematica has expanded well beyond its original purpose -- "A system for Doing Mathematics by Computer", as the subtitle of the original Mathematica book states. Whether or not it would make marketing sense to unify the products under the new name is problematic. As a long-time user since version 1, I would have no problem with the renaming, but almost 30 years of mostly free publicity is hard to give up.

What I find odd is that various Wolfram Research offerings do not play well together. For example, my premier service plus plan for Mathematica does not give me access to the Wolfram Programming Lab or the Wolfram Development platform, even though I already have all the functionality. (Some of the UI features of the Programming lab are useful when trying to teach newbies, for example.)

I prefer to 'own' the software, rather than renting it, and the latter seems to be the only option for Wolfram|One. For a professional user, one is paying a yearly fee of about half the outright purchase price for Mathematica, so if one is using the program more than two or three years, it is less expensive to buy Mathematica and purchase Premier Service every year than to continue with an annual fee. I see that there is an annual subscription for Mathematica, which is almost exactly the same price as the subscription for Wolfram|One.

I did a quick check of the pricing for the home use/personal use, and the benefits are exactly the same. The subscription price is exactly the same as well. So, you can pay a bit more to buy Mathematica initially, and have a lower annual cost for each subsequent year, or rent the software. I hadn't looked at this pricing before because I have an Industry license, and there are more options with this.

So, the real question remains: what is special about Wolfram|One, compared to Mathematica? If you use the subscription model for Mathematica, I can see no difference between the two. The advantage of Mathematica for me is that the yearly cost of ownership is substantially less with the outright purchase of Mathematica plus Premier Service Plus, and would be for a new user as well.

I did talk about this matter with my account manager when Wolfram|One was released, and he could not find any difference in the products, other than the licensing model. However, he was probably looking only at the Industry license (which I have), and not at the other user categories.

To conclude, as far as I can tell, the only difference between Wolfram|One and Mathematica, other than the name, is the fact that Wolfram|One is available only as an annual subscription, while Mathematica can also be purchased outright. With the current pricing schemes, the only relevant consequence of this is that the cost of 'ownership' is significantly less for Mathematica (purchase plus Premier Service Plus) if the program is kept up-to-date for more than two years. (This break-even point may vary a bit by user-type, but it is close enough.)

The one remaining nagging detail that the marketing pages do not cover is the explicit statement that all the features and functionality of the Wolfram Language are equally supported. This is of concern because other Wolfram Research products: Data Science Platform, Finance Platform, and System Modeler differentiate themselves by offering additional functionality not provided with Mathematica, and presumedly, Wolfram|One. So, if there really is extra functionality in Wolfram|One that is not made explicit on the marketing pages, it would be useful to know that.

I think that this is the thrust of this thread.

I think that the CDF Player is free now, at least according to the current marketing material. CDF Player|Pro costs money. However, I can find no reference to it in any of the current Premier service plans. I think it has been rendered moot by the current cloud and browser deployments, but someone from Wolfram Research might be able to comment. I only looked at the options for the US. They may be different elsewhere.

I have Premier Service Plus with the "Industry" level license, and I do not have CDF Player|Pro to install or distribute, although I remember having this option for earlier versions. At that time, I made the player available to work colleagues, but it was a real hassle, since they never wanted to do any of the work involved. I think that letting the notebooks run in the browser is better for these casual users, since there is nothing to install, and the functionality is up-to-date.

Having said that, if you don't want SaaS, then the only option is Mathematica.

As it was explained to me when the Development platform was introduced, it is intended as a tool for developers who want to develop APIs, forms, etc., for cloud deployment. It is possible to do other things, of course, but the environment is geared to making these tasks easier. It is possible to do the same thing with Mathematica, of course.

In the end, choosing between the products comes down to 'taste' and affordability. In my opinion, if you can afford it, Mathematica, along with Premier Service Plus, gives the widest range of choices in how to work. For me, at least, this option is less expensive for extended use. Now that I am retired, I still use the "Industry" level because of the extra features available. For me, it is worth the money spent. (Way less than a daily Starbuck's coffee.)

These questions are beyond my expertise. Someone from Wolfram may know, or you could contact your account manager.

I have already suggested to people at Wolfram that it doesn't make sense to not include access to the Programming lab, etc. when you have Premier Service Plus. I have heard that the entire product line is under review, so, with feedback, we might be able to influence things.

I was particularly put out by the marketing description of Mathematica as their 'legacy' product. To my mind, first does not equal 'legacy'. I will be attending this year's WTC, and I hope I get a chance to talk to the right people about this.