A new partnership wants to make learning a computing language simple and universally accessible.
Wolfram Research has teamed up with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to introduce sophisticated computation and knowledge into everything. Effective immediately and at no extra charge, every Raspberry Pi computer will now come bundled with Wolfram’s Mathematica and also a pilot release of the Wolfram Language.
Stephen Wolfram announced the making of Wolfram Language last week in a blog post, writing, “We call it the Wolfram Language because it is a language. But it’s a new and different kind of language. It’s a general-purpose knowledge-based language. That covers all forms of computing, in a new way.”
The language in Raspberry Pi will focus on education and invention, giving users a programming environment for STEM education and general computing.
“I’m a great believer in the importance of programming as a central component of education. And I’m excited that with the Wolfram Language I think we finally have a powerful programming language worthy of the next generation,” Wolfram wrote on his blog.
This means the start of something very significant to Wolfram: the possibility of being able to embed the language in pretty much any new system or machine.
“With the Raspberry Pi, we’ve passed the threshold for being able to run the Wolfram Language on an embedded computer anywhere,” he wrote.
Raspberry Pi runs Wolfram Language 10 to 20 times slower than a typical laptop, but Wolfram said its speed is just fine. Users can share their experiences and inventions with the Wolfram Language on Raspberry Pi in the Wolfram+Raspberry Pi section of the Wolfram Community.
Anyone who already owns a Raspberry Pi can get download instructions for the software here; in the future, all Raspberry Pi devices will be equipped with Wolfram Language. A full documentation of the Wolfram Language and system can be found here.
