Here is my take about the difference between Mathematica and the Wolfram Language: Mathematica is the combination of an interactive front end for writing code/functions etc., sending them to the Mathematica Kernel, and the displaying the results in the form specified by a functional wrapper you specified. The Wolfram Language is what you use to talk to the Mathematica kernel.
But you can also write and save WL code and submit it to the kernel directly. It will do whatever it's supposed to do: acquire and process data, save the results, and it includes all of the familiar Mathematica capabilities: image processing, integrating functions, finding the solution for an equation. You can do this in the kernel now.
The current development seems to be an extension of the range of the current WL as used in Mathematica (the front end/kernel package) into a general purpose language that includes all of the WL's current capabilities plus various new ones that were missing. The WL preliminary documentation site talks about the new stuff, but it's hard to know what's new if you aren't familiar with the current version.
Ok, your comment was not about what I thought it was (if I understand your response). It was really about how fast Mathematica is and not about the symbolic functional / lisp like / whatever of the language?
IMO, the only reason you would say that is that you either know nothing about Mathematica, or that your knowledge of it is very superficial (speaking as someone who uses it daily).
I use Mathematica for most of the programming I do. It makes ordinary programming (file handling, database handling, etc.) much easier (at least for me) than it would otherwise be. I even run nightly backups with a Mathematica script, taking advantage of Mathematica's logical operations.
It's completely different from Paul Graham's comments. They are very general and kind of generic comments about the future. Wolfram's talk is about computational intelligence, how it is being developed in the form of Wolfram|Alpha, and its nature.
But you can also write and save WL code and submit it to the kernel directly. It will do whatever it's supposed to do: acquire and process data, save the results, and it includes all of the familiar Mathematica capabilities: image processing, integrating functions, finding the solution for an equation. You can do this in the kernel now.
The current development seems to be an extension of the range of the current WL as used in Mathematica (the front end/kernel package) into a general purpose language that includes all of the WL's current capabilities plus various new ones that were missing. The WL preliminary documentation site talks about the new stuff, but it's hard to know what's new if you aren't familiar with the current version.