The title should have been Yet Another Graphics Program. I don't see any encouragement to think, quite the opposite in his caution to "forget the details, just trust me". The graphics are tuned and colorful but what's novel? Even GeoGebra has sliders. Show me a demonstration that produces an Aha! moment, a QED moment. The demonstration is more like the trend to tune a model to produce a predetermined output and claim to have done "science".

Free standing Mathematica DynamicModules or Java applets are very nice and have their place. It would be nice if a DynamicModule could be converted to a Java applet within Mathematica and then put on a web page.

Nevertheless, we must recognize that these objects are rather small boxes. For example, Bret Victor's applet that Nasser points to has just a single 2D Slider as a control. (There are two examples but they are basically the same.) So this is indeed a small and restricted box! But a very nice display - Bret does have style.

If you want to do mathematics, science, engineering, physics or economics there is a much larger box you can work in - by many orders of magnitude. It's called a Mathematica notebook. Even better are notebooks backed by applications. DynamicModules can play (a modest) role in notebooks. The entire notebook, Mathematica and supporting applications will breath a more vibrant life into them.

There is too much effort in trying to provide "Mathematica without Mathematica". I don't think these efforts are really that successful as a means of communication. They don't really serve the scientific community. I'll believe the scientific community is being served when I see Mathematica notebooks on http://arxiv.org/. If students go to university they have to pay tuition, and buy textbooks. If people want computers and internet service they have to pay for it. If you want to fly to a scientific conference you have to pay air fare. If you publish a journal paper someone has to pay page charges. (But not for posting Mathematica applications and notebooks!) So why don't people just buy Mathematica and facilitate their work and communication? Be free to play in the big box.

Please no Java applets! Java is dying, chrome is already blocking them, most mobile phones and tablets can't/don't run them. Definitely not good to invest in Java. It will die soon, like flash did. Javascript is much better choice nowadays, it is very 'hot', and most browser do a lot of tricks to run it incredibly fast!

Ruben,

You ask

How easy would be to replicate and extend the examples shown in the video using Wolfram Language?

An my view is

I will not be easy at all, except if you try small toys like those in the Mathematica Help system.

Although one can elaborate tiny examples (small toys) mimicking some aspects of the Bret Victor’s presentation, I think that, as per today, the Wolfram Language cannot be considered as «the media for thinking about the unthinkable» in the Bret Victor’s sense.

Could it be the day after tomorrow? Perhaps it could, but not as it is now.

In general, the dynamic architecture of the Wolfram Language collapses (freezes) as soon as you attempt something complex beyond a well curtailed essay for marketing or classroom purposes, or for making a piece of software for the Demonstration project. (By the way, I guess that it could have been the same with the Bret Victor’s video show: namely, the content could have been carefully chosen to fit his idea in the presentation, I would like to see a a Bret Victor like real life solution).

The unquestionable fact that WRI does not fix many bugs or bad functions that clearly affect the smoothness and functionality of Dynamic and correlated, among others, is in my opinion, a corroboration of it, (see my posts on inefficiencies of Locators in MathGroup for a reference, whose solution, as far as I know, has not been tackled at all). Remember that locators are a key tool in the Victor’s show, however used in a very very simple way.

You asked and I share my humble opinion. It is my personal experience after 8 years of working with Mathematica on very similar subjects in different fields, in a very similar way to the one presented by Bret. Working on dynamic pieces of software since the appearance of Mathematica version 6 which was released in May 1, 2007.

What if working with a gigantic supercomputer? Could it change partially the story?... Maybe. But only in the realm of crunching number capacity and not in the adequateness of the algorithms themselves. And it is algorithms which matters: first sofware then hardware.

Anyway, I would appreciate an example of a large enough working system deployed in an industrial environment, or equivalent, as a refutation of my view.

Martin.

I completely agree that Mathematica could probably do amazing things. IMHO, the problem is that there's not so much clear information about how to create dynamic interactive interfaces and the existing documentation is spread all over the place. Until existing and potential users have access to that, people will still underestimate or be unaware of the power of the Wolfram Language. I hope Wolfram Media can publish some titles in the near future about the topic. It would really help to make Mathematica and the Wolfram Language go mainstream!

I'm in agreement here. While there are a lot of things in the documentation and lots of 'neat' examples, they all cover elementary applications. I frequently have to contact support to get clarification or hints. This usually works -- some great ideas have been returned -- but it would be better if there were more examples and more details of the internals of Dynamic.

When Mathematica has a book (last version was version 5), there were chapters about theory that were quite long and detailed. Most of this documentation is still useful -- which is why I still have the books -- but they do not cover anything newer. This includes Dynamic and Manipulate in version 6. It is possible that this type of long discussion does not fit into the electronic documentation, but it should be possible to publish monographs or other specialized documents for advanced users.

An interesting question. IMHO Mathematica is definitely the top interactive programing environment. I think you have to also consider Wolfram SystemModeler as it also represents visual interactive approach to programming. A related post: Climate change and programming?