In fact, I just realized that over the course of the decade during which were developing Mathematica 6-and accelerating greatly towards the end-I spent altogether about 10,000 hours doing what we call “design reviews” for Mathematica 6, trying to make all those new functions and pieces of functionality in Mathematica 6 be as clean and simple as possible, and all fit together.Īt least the way I do it, doing software design is a lot like doing fundamental science. Actually, I think much more even than for Mathematica 1. And particularly for Mathematica 6, there was a huge amount of design to do. It’s also a part of things that I personally am deeply involved in.Įver since we started developing it more than 21 years ago, I’ve been the chief architect and chief designer of Mathematica‘s core functionality. And I think it’s actually one of the most crucial assets for the long-term future of Mathematica. But I think it’s something we’ve been very successful at doing with Mathematica. It requires maintaining consistency and coherence across every area, over the course of many years. It’s what gives the system limitless possibilities-rather than just a bunch of specific features.īut it’s hard to achieve. Because it’s what makes the whole system more than just the sum of its parts. It’s not easy to make a big software system that really fits together.
(This post was originally published on the Wolfram Blog.)
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