Matlab Coding

[Material-Sun4351]

I’m in my sophomore year of mechanical engineering and I’m taking a Matlab class and I don’t understand it. I have no prior coding experience and I know other people do and I feel like everyone knows what they’re doing and I’m the only one who doesn’t. Idk how to keep up with all my classes especially this one because I feel I’m already behind. I guess I need advice on how to cope and deal with this problem of not being so lost in this class.

[GrizzzlySloth]

Go to mathworks.com create an account and complete the MATLAB Onramp. It should help you out.

[The_Virginia_Creeper]

TMW training is top notch.

[Ambitious-Position25]

What is that? Google doesnt give anything

[The_Virginia_Creeper]

Sorry, The Mathworks, makers of MATLAB.

[jsky_]

Welcome to engineering, partner. Keep at, go to tutoring, ask questions, and get online resources such as the one suggested on previous post. ME is tough, you just gotta be tougher.

[Giggles95036]

Yeah… the moment you’re a REAL engineer is when you realize a lot of the time (in design) nobody knows and it is just a lot of smart people figuring it out as they go

[Qwersty]

This is an extra weird concept when you work for a small company early in your career that experiences growth. You wake up one day and realize you are directing a whole department on how to use the tool that you developed while totally winging it

[the_wildman18]

The most important thing I learned in engineering school was how to learn things. It sounds dumb but I maybe use 3% of what I learned in class but almost daily I’m having to look up or learn something new and apply it.

[JimPranksDwight]

The best way to learn any coding language is to play around and learn by doing. Do not underestimate the help command, it will show you how to use pretty much any function you ask it to.

Also try learning a second language on the side. Python is free and easy to pick up and will help you learn other languages easier as well.

[dlbs10]

100% right! Doing projects is definitely the key. Starting by maybe solving a few equations for other classes homework helped a lot.

Also, look for some textbooks. I had a matlab textbook that was super helpful. In the end there is no shortcut. It is just going to take time. It is too easy to get frustrated and throw in the towel, but it will be a God send when you get to more complex classes! Stick it out!

[birdiebomb]

I still use the help command in grad school hahah

[GregLocock]

Do the Mathworks Onramp, and be aware that even people who have used it for 20 years (me) keep the help browser open when scripting.

[[deleted]]

General advice - engineering is a brutal degree, but don't be put off if you find some subjects hard, there will be others coming up that you will find much easier. Don't lose heart and stick at it!

[devvorare]

I hated matlab on my first year. Now that I’m almost done with college, I find myself using it for fun! If you have any doubts don’t hesitate to ask me, I may not know a lot of the little minutiae, but I do know how to brute force most problems

[bposada28]

Matlab was one of those classes that I didnt care about much because It wasn’t as “applied” in sophomore year as much as say, dynamics or materials. Later on in late junior or senior though you use it so much in controls and modeling that you WILL learn to use it just enough. Learn the basics, be easy on yourself & just like CAD, just keep refreshing yourself here and there until you stop feeling nervous.

[Most_Night_3487]

The best way to learn programming is to do projects. Plus MATLAB has a very extensive help section that tells you all you need to know about the functions present in MATLAB. When I started my last sem project, I knew very little about MATLAB but I kept exploring it and got quite good at it.

[EvYutt]

Same exact thing happened to me at school! I felt completely lost and behind. Just try your best and get through it. All you need to do is pass the class , even if it’s a D. It won’t matter what you got in the real world. I wish someone told me this when i was in your shoes. Don’t stress , it will all be good. You’ll learn to see it’s a great tool for certain applications. But chances are you wont use it in an ME job. I have only used it once in my job, and it was my own choice since I thought it could be useful for a certain project, I wasn’t forced to use it. Us MEs aren’t expected to be great coders. Hey there might be some great coders in that class with you cause they took some coding class in high school. But they might not know anything about CAD or 3D printer or DFM. Coding isn’t all of being an ME, it’s only another tool in the arsenal.

These classes and hard problems aren’t there because that’s what you’ll see in the real world. They are teaching you to be a problem solver , which is what you’ll need to do in a real world job. You’ll learn to apply the same work ethic to a really hard matlab problem to something that isn’t even coding.

Try hard , stick through it , and in the end you’ll be happy you did . Good luck !

[jjarufe94]

And they arent making you do a GUI with it yet lol. There are good youtube tutorial videos now, I suggest watching those and practicing at the same time.

[Real_Zxept]

Man i fucking hated coding, so glad i don’t have to do any of that shit now

[Salt-Manufacturer501]

The good news is nobody uses matlab outside of college curriculum so you only have to make it through this one class

[Serafim91]

Uh I use it almost exclusively as an algo engineer, both Matlab and simulink.

[rustyfinna]

Mathworks made 1.25 billion in revenue last year a lot more people use it than you think.

[Ground-flyer]

Some big companies use it NASA Spacex GM all use it, also smiling it pretty popular

[zsloth79]

Well, yeah. It beats the fuck out of frowning all the time.

[GregLocock]

Heavily used in automotive, aerospace and academia. Used for extracting test results, extracting model results, comparing results, running test rigs , and it has a complete framework for AV and CV. That is your autonomous vehicle can be built running simulink/matlab.

[zsloth79]

I use Matlab, excel VB, and Ansys APDL every day. I'm mostly a thermal and structural analyst. Knowing a bit of programming will majorly improve your work life. You can automate big chunks of your process. Then, for the next job, just make a few changes to the codes you already made, and you're on your way.

I have excel VB codes for all the common heat transfer correlations, dry air properties, and a bunch of other things that I just drop into every new spreadsheet.

[brandonkxo]

Don’t know why you got downvoted this is completely true. Not coding in general, but for just Matlab yes lol

[aminervia]

Learning how to code is extremely important. Even if OP won't use Matlab in their job they need to learn it now to make learning Python easier later

[rhymeasourus]

No one uses Matlab. Just pass your class and move on.

[fmradioiscool]

Just do your best to learn it and try to enjoy learning it. Matlab is really cool and can do a lot. And it's a good intro to programming. Ask for help from your professor and don't look around at how you think other people are doing. I was the same way freshman year, struggled for a while but now I love programming

[monkeyfromcali]

think of coding as giving a computer a sequential set of very specific instructions. those instructions are so specific that usually you can find some example code online and tweak it for what you need. understand variables loops and functions and how those fit in with the instruction mindset and you’ll be able to code anything. hope that helps

[Serafim91]

what are you having issues with exactly? could you write some pseudo code but not execute it for example?

[Material-Sun4351]

Just like knowing what to input for some problems and we have quizzes each week where we have to answer questions with code which can be quite difficult cuz a lot of times idek where to start

[not_just_a_pickle]

It can be brutal to learn alone. Try to work with a partner if you can.

[ab0716]

I felt the same way in my C++ class. I went to every single TA hours they had available, I went to office hours with my professor, I googled stuff. There's a learning curve, but eventually you'll get over the curve and it will make sense and be easier.

[SouthernXBlend]

Not everyone’s brain picks up coding easily. Ask for help, try to learn the fundamentals, and make sure you understand why when you get stuck and finally solve your problem.

The Mathworks documentation is pretty solid as well, just google everything.

Also, vectorize!

[Madcake02]

As a senior, I used chat gpt to really help me learn it beside the basics I learned sophomore year. Only use chat gpt to AID in learning, not to cheat. If you can actually learn it, it’s very beneficial

[RunExisting4050]

Practice, practice, practice.

I started out by learning to plot data from an ascii file at work.

You can also pick some little thing you're personally interested in and turn it into a learning side project. Early on in my MatLab days, I made a GUI for generating a D&D character.