Stephen Wolfram released a formal introduction to The Wolfram Language two days ago but I am watching it only now.

The demonstration answers a question I had had since first hearing about this language — How is it different from Mathematica? The answer seems to be that this is the Mathematica programming language, IDE, and APIs, but conceptually separated from the Mathematica environment and given its own name. Thus, those of use who used to say we “programmed in Mathematica” will now say we “program in the Wolfram Language,” and the code we create in Mathematica can also be run in other environments (in web browsers, on embedded devices, etc.).

It’s nice to hear Wolfram credit this as a learning language; many people regard Mathematica as complex and obscure, but the reality is that for anybody who can handle leaving the world of imperative and object-oriented programming, it is extremely easy to learn, and to use and it’s extremely flexible. Separating the language from Mathematica may encourage novices to try it.

Wolfram doesn’t announce a release date in the video but I suspect it will be simultaneous with the release of Mathematica 10, which may be very soon.