Julia has very little (more or less zero) symbolic manipulation library work right now.

If I were to write a Wolfram Alpha alternative in Julia right now, I'd do all of the symbolic manipulation using PyCall and sympy.

I think Alpha just didn't recognize your notation. (x or y) and (x or not y) and (not x or y) works fine https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28x+or+y%29+and+%28x+...

Wolfram|Alpha does take boolean, but in the notation that Mathematica likes (&&, ||, !, etc). You can also write it out in plain english (NOT A OR B, etc).

I used it to simplify some kmaps for class the other day and it's very nice: prints out a truth table and various types of minimal forms.

"Conventional" boolean operators work as well. Again, I suspect that it depends on whether a developer has mapped something ToExpression can consume, either via forms, boxes, or unlocking the function itself. (This would be consistent with the "throw more mud at it" comment.)

As a Mathematica and WApro user, I find most of the utility in not having to import random datasets myself. As every researcher, I have a disgusting library of scripts that often involve curl, groovy, awk, sed, etc., to pull info into mma. It's nice when that becomes SEP[1].

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=+%28x+%E2%88%A8+y%29+%E...

[1] Someone Else's Problem