I find it amusing that many people (seemingly Hackers) concentrate on Wolfram's ego rather than on the actual thing at hand. I don't care about egos, lipstick color, or the pants the language creator wears. I care about the language, so let's talk about it now:
From a long-time Mathematica user: this is not a language I like. I use it, but there is little to no fun. Many things aren't immediately clear or become problematic if you stop using the language for a while. As an example, quick, what is the difference between Module[], Block[] and With[]? Even if you remember that With[] is a lexical scoping construct, Module[] and Block[] can be confusing.
It doesn't help that Mathematica is absolutely horrible for debugging code. I don't know why they put so little emphasis on their REPL, but it's way behind the times. Even mismatched parentheses can cause serious pain (and I hate the fact that things move around when I edit parentheses).
That said, I have a lot of respect for Mathematica as a complete system. It is incredibly useful, most mathematical tools you will ever need are there. It is also a great tool for explorative data analysis. Have a pile of data you'd like to see patterns in? Load it up, mash it into shape with high-level functions, then quickly produce great-looking graphics. Nothing even comes close to the flexibility of Mathematica here.
From a long-time Mathematica user: this is not a language I like. I use it, but there is little to no fun. Many things aren't immediately clear or become problematic if you stop using the language for a while. As an example, quick, what is the difference between Module[], Block[] and With[]? Even if you remember that With[] is a lexical scoping construct, Module[] and Block[] can be confusing.
It doesn't help that Mathematica is absolutely horrible for debugging code. I don't know why they put so little emphasis on their REPL, but it's way behind the times. Even mismatched parentheses can cause serious pain (and I hate the fact that things move around when I edit parentheses).
That said, I have a lot of respect for Mathematica as a complete system. It is incredibly useful, most mathematical tools you will ever need are there. It is also a great tool for explorative data analysis. Have a pile of data you'd like to see patterns in? Load it up, mash it into shape with high-level functions, then quickly produce great-looking graphics. Nothing even comes close to the flexibility of Mathematica here.