Woxi
Hacker ApprovedWolfram language interpreter in Developer tools
Open-source Wolfram Language interpreter in Rust, praised for being free and for running much existing Wolfram code. Critics say performance and the studio lack Mathematica's polish.
Open-source Wolfram Language interpreter in Rust, praised for being free and for running much existing Wolfram code. Critics say performance and the studio lack Mathematica's polish.
29 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 22
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 76%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 22 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Free open-source license
“License is a big deal, and not just for cost and openness, but also for practical use in pages like docker, ci/cd pipeline, cloud deployments”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust” “Any reimplementation is better than nothing at all, at least for people that don't run proprietary software”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust” “I think this is great. A lot of people want to have a free alternative.”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Woxi - Open-source Mathematica / Wolfram Language reimplementation” - Comment from 1 Mar 2026 in “Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust”
Growing feature set, most Mathematica code
“massively expanded Woxi's feature set. So it's well worth another try for anyone who tried it back then!”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Woxi - Open-source Mathematica / Wolfram Language reimplementation” “We're steadily getting closer to the next release which will support most features of Mathematica 1.0”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust” “A lot of Wolfram Language code just works already!”
Comment from 6 Jun 2026 in “Symbolica 2.0: programmable symbols for Python and Rust” Fast startup, quick short scripts
“For short scripts, it’s often faster because there’s less initialization overhead.”
Comment from 7 Jun 2026 in “Symbolica 2.0: Programmable Symbols for Python and Rust” “Faster startup time because of no license check”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust” Useful as terminal kernel or agent tool
“for me turning that into an mcp for agents and assistants has been an amazing experience”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Woxi - Open-source Mathematica / Wolfram Language reimplementation” “This is cool! I've always wanted a polished kernel on the terminal.”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Studio lacks Mathematica notebook features
“it just falls short of what Mathematica notebooks do for me”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Woxi - Open-source Mathematica / Wolfram Language reimplementation” “I cannot adopt it until this gap is closed in the studio.”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Woxi - Open-source Mathematica / Wolfram Language reimplementation” Implementation seen as naive or partial
“Interesting exercise with woxi in terms of what vibe coding can produce. Not sure about the WL implementation though.”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust” “It's essentially a test mock-up (not even trying partial fraction decomposition for rational functions).”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust” “everything I've looked at seems very naive”
Comment from 1 Mar 2026 in “Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust” Architecture and AI-tooling concerns
“It's so disappointing to see CLAUDE.md in projects like these. Basically rules it out for serious use.”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “Wolfram Language and Mathematica Version 15, AI Assistant, Symbolic Music, More” “There is an architectural flaw in Woxi that will sink it hard.”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Woxi: Wolfram Mathematica Reimplementation in Rust”
What people said
36 of the 42 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“should be way faster than bunch of glue over different Python libraries”
“This really does seem wonderful”
“it has improved a lot since then”
“it just falls short of what Mathematica notebooks do for me”
“I think this is great. A lot of people want to have a free alternative.”
“I cannot adopt it until this gap is closed in the studio.”
“Woxi Studio seems to be able to display them”
“for me turning that into an mcp for agents and assistants has been an amazing experience”
“Performance is pretty good for most stuff by now.”
“Of these only Sage, Maxima and Woxi were capable of giving the expected answers.”
“Performance is still a concern, but we're working on improving it.”
“massively expanded Woxi's feature set. So it's well worth another try for anyone who tried it back then!”
“Spot checking, I don't see any issues.”
“It's so disappointing to see CLAUDE.md in projects like these. Basically rules it out for serious use.”
“I saw this project before, nice work!”
“For short scripts, it’s often faster because there’s less initialization overhead.”
“A lot of Wolfram Language code just works already!”
“Glad to see Rust project under AGPL-3.0.”
“everything I've looked at seems very naive”
“License is a big deal, and not just for cost and openness, but also for practical use in pages like docker, ci/cd pipeline, cloud deployments”
“Interesting exercise with woxi in terms of what vibe coding can produce. Not sure about the WL implementation though.”
“Useless thing is not less useless by the virtue of being FOSS.”
“Any reimplementation is better than nothing at all, at least for people that don't run proprietary software”
“Half-assed reimplementations of existing software (often in the name of "memory safety") is what the Rust community is best known for.”
“Switching out to an interpreted language has got to be anathema to a rewrite-it-in-Rust project”
“There is an architectural flaw in Woxi that will sink it hard.”
“This is cool! I've always wanted a polished kernel on the terminal.”
“there was always some surprisingly straight forward solution”
“It's having ~ 5000 tests already.”
“Faster startup time because of no license check”
“seems very promising and the former addressed my first concern out-the-gate”
“I'm very optimistic that the polish will come sooner rather than later”
“It's a worthwhile effort.”
“It's essentially a test mock-up (not even trying partial fraction decomposition for rational functions).”
“We're steadily getting closer to the next release which will support most features of Mathematica 1.0”
“That’s why I’m working on an open source implementation of Mathematica (i.e. an Wolfram Language interpreter)”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.