WolframLanguage

Quora Answer : What are the pros and cons of using a programming language like Wolfram over using something like Python, PHP, or Java for an AI-assisted web tool?

May 18, 2017

Pro :

Wolfram has the AI / knowledge-base built in. If you don't use Wolfram, you have to get a knowledge base from somewhere else.

Wolfram isn't a bad language, being a symbolic / functional language.

Con :

Wolfram is proprietary, so you are dependent on Wolfram Research to maintain the language and keep the platform and the knowledge base up to date. If WR shut it down, what happens to your system?

I don't know how expressive the language really is. Compared to other high-level functional languages like Clojure or Haskell (or even Julia or R) it might be somewhat verbose.

If I was building a data / mathsy kind of service online, I'd be inclined to look into things like Julia and R. I would be very reluctant to use Java or PHP. (PHP only for a very, very thin UI layer with something else at the back-end)

Python is a reasonable compromise because the same language has both good support for building web-sites (many good frameworks) and these days has very good maths / scientific / machine learning / AI libraries.

Clojure and Haskell both just good languages in general, and expressive enough to do mathsy stuff so should always be considered.

But yeah, I think Python is your safe bet.

But it really all does depend on where you are actually getting your knowledge-base from.