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Mathematica as a Programming Language

Mathematica is an unprecedentedly flexible and intuitive programming language.

Mathematica includes advanced programming methods from modern computer science—and adds a host of new ideas of its own.


Mathematica incorporates a range of programming paradigms—so you can write every program in its most natural way.

Procedural Programming


List-based Programming

Many operations are automatically threaded over lists.



This flattens out sublists.


This partitions into sublists of length 2.


Functional Programming


The is a "pure function" with # being the slot in which the argument is inserted.


Rule-Based Programming


The _ stands for a single expression; __ stands for any sequence of expressions.


Object-Oriented Programming

Here are three definitions to be associated with the object h.

This uses the definitions made for h.


String-Based Programming


Mixed Programming Paradigms

Many of Mathematica's most powerful functions mix different programming paradigms.





Mathematica gives you the flexibility to write programs in many different styles.

A dozen definitions of the factorial function

After you have finished with definitions for f, you must clear them.



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