Try the knowledge-based Wolfram Language for free in your browser

 

 Stephen Wolfram introduced the knowledge-based Wolfram Language earlier this year. It extends the work he started with Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha to let people solve problems at an extremely abstracted level that lets them connect knowledge directly with programming. The Wolfram Language was also made available for free to those who bought the $35 Raspberry Pi computer. Now there’s Wolfram Open Cloud, announced and made available earlier this week; it makes the language even easier to access and try.
All you need is a browser and the willingness to create a free Wolfram account. If you’ve already got an account, you can use it to access the Wolfram Open Cloud. Once you login, you can use the prebuilt ThingsToTry notebook to learn how the service works by following the text instructions and sample code in it. Pressing Shift-Enter at the end of a code sample runs the code. Simple code such as, literally, “2 + 2″ produces results nearly instantly. Other, more complex code, such as for generating 3D graphics, may take a few seconds or more before a result is displayed.



If you have a software development background, head over to The Wolfram Language: FAST INTRODUCTION FOR PROGRAMMERS. The sidebar on the left gives you a quick overview of the categories of topics, ranging from the basics of its 5,000 built-in functions to 3D graphics and how to use its natural language input.

Note, however, it looks like some of the language is either not available when using a free account or may not work the way it is described. For example, trying to use the external connection to the Facebook API
SocialMediaData[“Facebook”, “FriendNetwork”]
resulted in this error message:
SocialMediaData::cloudf : ​ SocialMediaData is not currently supported in the Wolfram Cloud.

Testing the natural language interpreter using the test phrase “= picture of dog” (a variation of the example Wolfram gives of “= picture of a wolf”) results in an array listing every dog breed name, instead of displaying the expected generic dog photo or drawing.



On the other hand, when the knowledge-based code works, it is spectacular and demonstrates the real power of Wolfram Language: the ability to immediately use real world data without having to find a source, transform it into a form that can be imported correctly, importing the data, and then finding the right way to work with it.

For example, I took one of the code examples to make a 3D plot of the terrain in a five-mile radius around Mount Everest, and had Wolfram Open Cloud produce 3D terrain maps of two mountains closer to home for me: Haleakala on Maui and Mauna Kea on Hawaii Island. Here’s the code:

ListPlot3D[GeoElevationData[GeoBoundingBox[GeoDisk[Entity[“Mountain”, “Haleakala”],Quantity[5, “Miles”]]]], MeshFunctions -> {#3 &},Filling -> Bottom, ColorFunction -> “Rainbow”]
ListPlot3D[GeoElevationData[GeoBoundingBox[GeoDisk[Entity[“Mountain”, “MaunaKea”],Quantity[5, “Miles”]]]], MeshFunctions -> {#3 &},Filling -> Bottom, ColorFunction -> “Rainbow”]

For a structured introduction to the remarkable Wolfram Language, and in order to further explore Wolfram Open Cloud, Stephen Wolfram made his book An Elementary Introduction to Wolfram Language available as a free download. You can also purchase a hard copy version of the book.