When comparing Wolfram Mathematica vs Java, the Slant community recommends Java for most people. In the question“What are the best programming languages for data science?” Java is ranked 16th while Wolfram Mathematica is ranked 20th. The most important reason people chose Java is:
It makes it easy to debug and to read code.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Lots of functionality
Pro Built-in CPU Parallelization
Pro Very mature
Wolfram Mathematica has been around for a long time without any major changes in the basic design.
Pro Coherent API over different domains
Pro Supports units and can do much more than just maths
Other platforms severely lack this useful feature.
Pro Fully integrated symbolic processing
Pro Very powerful and fast, also possible to get for free
Pro Verbosity
It makes it easy to debug and to read code.
Pro Mature ecosystem
The language and all its tools have enough time to age and they've aged well.
Pro Type-safe
It is easier to catch errors sooner.
Cons
Con Unintuitive data types and strange assignment statements
Representation of data still remains highly fragmented technically and one fumbles between data types and stumbles on strange assignment statements to attempt conversions of meaning.
Con Proprietary
Con Memory hungry
Running the virtual machine, application server and application itself consumes significant amount of resources.
Con Unnecessarily obtuse and verbose
If you like typing 40 lines of code to open a file, Java is the language for you. If, on the other hand, you’d actually like to get something done, look elsewhere.
Con Oracle
Enough said.
In more detail: Oracle has acquired Java from Sun and continues to surround it with controversy ever since (legendary lawsuit with google, money extortion from the enterprise users etc.).
