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GUI front end for Mathematica 11?

Posted 8 years ago

I realize this is a “newbie” question, however, I am a newbie. Is there a GUI front end for Mathematica 11? I use Microsoft Visual Studio to program in .NET. The GUI makes it easier to visualize code and compiles the code for faster execution. Thanks!

POSTED BY: Brian Buchholz
7 Replies
I would like to thank everyone for their input. Even though I believe Mathematica is the future for programming, I found getting started was a large task. You have helped me greatly.

Brian Buchholz

POSTED BY: Brian Buchholz

I'd also comment that, although some people enjoy using Wolfram Workbench as a conventional IDE for writing large (or medium or small) Mathematica Packages, the notebook interface is also well suited for this and has some significant advantages (where things are set up to save the ASCII code .m file from the notebook automatically). E.G, being able to use the full formatting capabilities of the notebook; being able to document in the the notebook using its full formatting abilities; being able to program the notebook itself to achieve various things; and so on and so on... I generally do all my work this way--and organized properly this can be used for very large packages--my largest I think is about 60,000 lines of Wolfram Language code in the .m file.

Basically the sky is the limit with notebooks.... though, some do prefer the IDE route: I respect their choice ;-)

POSTED BY: David Reiss

There are large and complex packages that were written this way: use a notebook (including text cells and comments) and auto-save to an .m file. SciDraw is one example. One nice feature of notebook is hierarchical sectioning.

The reason why I don't like to do this personally (for packages!) is that it's hard to use a version control system with it. The missing piece is a good reliable notebook diff tool, I guess. There is in fact a diff tool in Mathematica, but in the end I found using plain text more convenient for packages.

I use the Mathematica plugin IntelliJ IDEA instead of Workbench for packages.

But interactive work is something entirely different. IDEs are just not suitable for it. Even when writing packages, I constantly have a notebook open to interactively test it, even put new functions together within the notebook before moving the code to the package file.

POSTED BY: Szabolcs Horvát

Mathematica is meant to be used interactively. An IDE is only useful if you are writing big and complex packages and is completely unsuitable for day-to-day work with Mathematica. If you are a beginner, you won't be writing packages for a while. It is not the usual (or IMO the productive) way to use Mathematica.

Perhaps you are used to working this way in other languages:

  • First type the code in a file. This is often a large program/scipt.
  • When done, run it.
  • Edit the code, re-run, etc.

Mathematica uses the notebook interface instead. You evaluate a small input and see the output immediately. Then tweak it. Move to the next small input. Go back to previous ones, edit them, etc. You re-run a small piece of code after each edit and you see the result.

The structure of the language is such that is it very suitable for working interactively like this.

Typical stuff that people do with Mathematica, such as scientific data processing, also benefits significantly from the notebook interface.

Mathematica was a pioneer of the notebook. Then notebooks became standard in computer algebra systems, but not with other high level scientific languages. Finally in the past 5-10 years people started to see the great benefits of the notebook paradigm and the most prominent scientific programming languages all use it now. MATLAB had "cell mode" first (years ago), which is really just borrowing a few great features of notebooks, and finally introduced the "Live Editor" which is a full notebook interface.

IPython, the Python shell for scientific work, also has a very good, web based notebook. This morphed into the Jupyter project, which works with many other scientific languages, such as Julia.

The only such system I am familiar with where the notebook is not yet popular is R. It has something they call notebooks, but it's something entirely different and meant for report writing, not for interactive work. But several R environments, such as RStudio, have borrowed features of MATLAB's cell mode.

So as you can see, the notebook is becoming a standard interface for the type of work Mathematica is meant for. Forget about IDEs for a while and try it.

POSTED BY: Szabolcs Horvát
Posted 8 years ago

Unless something has changed recently, Workbench 2 will not work with Mathematica 11. However, a beta version which will work is available from tech support on request. Or have I missed something?

POSTED BY: David Keith

Sean: Thank you for your prompt response. I did not know about Wolfram Workbench.It turns out it is a free download for me. You have been a big help.

POSTED BY: Brian Buchholz

What do you mean by GUI? Mathematica comes with a GUI. It's very tightly tied to its GUI. Very few people use Mathematica from the terminal or command line. Are you using Mathematica from the terminal or command line?

Do you want an IDE for Mathematica? Wolfram Research sells an IDE called Wolfram Workbench that will be somewhat similar to Visual Studio. There are a couple of other alternatives. People have developed plug-ins for several other IDEs such as IntelliJIDEA.

POSTED BY: Sean Clarke
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