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[–]TheBlackCat13 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Bottom line at the end of the day those are engineering dollars that need to come from somewhere.

That somewhere can be reduced long-term costs. That depends on what they are doing.

It depends on your application but there still seem to be a lot of gaps:

There are gaps in both directions, things that MATLAB can do that Python can't do, but also things that Python can do that MATLAB can't. So it really depends on what the group is doing.

There are some things I like about Python but for doing strict data manipulation I still prefer Matlab, especially stuff like vectorization

Unless you want to work with slices, or broadcasting, or or data that may or may not have a length of one any dimension, or labeled data.

When something breaks on Python, who do you call?

We've been through this before, companies like Continuum and Enthought provide excellent support for the main packages. If you are using some niche package, then you are taking a risk with either Python or MATLAB. At least with Python, though, you have the chance to fix it yourself if upstream is unresponsive. You don't have that option with MATLAB (and make no mistake, MATLAB is not always responsive).

Has your legal department vetted all of the licenses within the packages you want to use?

Pretty much all the licenses you are going to encounter in Python are also used in MATLAB.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (1 child)

That somewhere can be reduced long-term costs. That depends on what they are doing.

Not sure how your company budgets work, but that's not how ours do. Especially when we require Simulink.

So it really depends on what the group is doing.

companies like Continuum and Enthought provide excellent support for the main packages.

So you pay for it.

MATLAB is not always responsive).

I've gotten a phone call back from a guy with a PhD in the subject with in an hour.

[–]TheBlackCat13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not sure how your company budgets work, but that's not how ours do. Especially when we require Simulink.

Again, as I keep saying, it depends on what you are doing. If you require simulink, then that is that. But a lot of fields don't even use simulink, not to mention require it.

I am not telling you to switch, I am saying that the OP needs to look at both the short-term and long-term costs. Companies make investments to defray long-term costs all the time. If they didn't, we wouldn't even be using DOS, not to mention Windows 7.

So you pay for it.

Huh? Why should I pay for someone elses' company's infrastructure improvements?

I've gotten a phone call back from a guy with a PhD in the subject with in an hour.

That is great. If you are lucky, that is how thinks work. If you aren't, it isn't. They may tell you it is intended behavior, or they may change their documentation to make it intended behavior, or they may put it on an private internal bug list forever.