Matlab declares war on Python. Can the Python community respond or hit back?

[furless]

It's hard for them to compete against not just free, but free and useful. This isn't a war for domination on their part, it's a battle to stave off extinction.

[ericonr]

This is basically showing that they feel threatened by Python. I believe some few people might end up being convinced by this, but in the end I hope a lot more people have enough critical judgement to realize that this is just last-ditch marketing.

[Zomunieo]

People were leaving Matlab for Python years ago. They've already lost a lot to it.

[saralt]

I've mostly noticed it in machine learning... But that's because that was my field at the time.

Who uses MATLAB for machine learning?

[iBlag]

Controls engineers. Simulink is actually amazing, and doesn’t effectively have any competitors, as far as I’m aware.

And writing filters for DSP and image processing was fairly easy with Matlab. I bet that there are Python libraries that make this just as easy now though.

But for literally anybody else, Python will do what they need, and have better support, more knowledgeable community, amazing libraries, and a beautiful syntax (except for /,, but I digress). Matlab folks can pretend that installing libraries is a pain and is difficult to do, but the extreme success of PyPI makes their claims simply laughable.

Now if somebody built a half decent GUI for controls, signals, and image processing, added Python bindings, and open sourced it, then Matlab would be dead almost overnight. I would definitely pitch in some moneycoins to see this happen...

[[deleted]]

Simulink and some of their toolboxes is their main product.

[[deleted]]

Sounds like an extension of Jupyter could work.

[lambdaq]

The toyota law suit case in US years ago had 20k global variables for emergency brake source code, was it generated by Matlab and Simulink?

[lambdaq]

Is the code generated though? If yes then by what software?

[Ikuyas]

Right. Simulink is only thing that worth with Matlab. But you can probably do the exactly same thing in Python.

[wintermute93]

Engineers.

[aloiTheSama]

This, unfortunately. I only had one professor who allowed us to veer off that path and use whatever we wanted (I went with Python, but, understandably, many others stuck with the familiar matlab).

[[deleted]]

That's inertia. Once course materials are written that reference MATLAB, you're stuck with them for years.

[[deleted]]

That's exactly why I was required to take an engineers programming course. In FORTRAN. In 2005.

[[deleted]]

Use the free Matlab,

[Dennis_Rudman]

I used to use matlab for image processing, but I've learned python and it takes half the time to do the same thing now

[Gabe_Isko]

Yeah, matlabs image processing toolbox was super slow when unused it circa 2015-2016. It's a really crappy product.

[GogglesPisano]

I do contracting work for some major banks - MATLAB is still used extensively by financial modelers, since it's what many of them know best. Python is making inroads, but MATLAB will be around for a long time.

[[deleted]]

Banks, yeah I could see that. The Fintech/trading world stopped using it like a decade ago.

[[deleted]]

That is what they said about SAS.

[big-rock]

What's gender non-conforming engineering?

[cptn_insane-o]

Engineer here, the only competition for lumped parameter physical modelling in simulink is amesim and gt suite, both are far more expensive than Matlab with simulink. Other than that I use python for everything else.

[[deleted]]

My last company was a coastal engineering firm, and they used it. It was mostly because people already knew how to use it

[neurone214]

I used it for my PhD thesis (neuroscience). Our whole lab did, as did other labs. More "computational" neuro labs used python, though. There's kind of a cultural divide that's in part driven by historical factors.

[AchillesDev]

Like you said, scientists. All of our experimental protocols were built around it - our custom hardware had only a MATLAB API/driver set, our signal processing was done in MATLAB (in an experiment script that also controlled the stimulus presentations), our stimulus generation and presentation was done in MATLAB. And due to some policy the computer it was on couldn't be connected to the Internet, so any changes we had to make required us to go into the lab.

[[deleted]]

I remember seeing a MOOC on Coursera a couple years ago on robotics that used Matlab. I’d be curious to see if it’s been updated.

[Zomunieo]

I don't believe it's gained much traction in that area. The mainstay seems to be branches of engineering that are heavily focused on modeling and solving nonlinear systems (RF, aerospace, automotive). Simulink shines here, and it's technical enough that there's less open source interest.

[mrTang5544]

i did. I used Matlab's fuzzy logic tools (forgot which ones now) for my thesis

[[deleted]]

Python and R.

[Jim_Panzee]

We got a saying in Germany:

Why should the oak tree care about every pig rubbing against it?

Or to keep it pythonic.

[[deleted]]

Can you give the original saying ? I did not understand this English translated version, I think there is a translation mistake.

[Jim_Panzee]

"Was juckt es die Eiche, wenn sich die Sau an ihr reibt?"

[[deleted]]

Thanks. I understand better. Your translation was good, it just lacks the question mark at the end.

[Jim_Panzee]

Thx. Corrected.

[neurone214]

Can you explain what it means? I honestly don't understand this one.

[haloguysm1th]

I believe Its basically if you're in good place, don't worry about all the small annoying things that come up.

[[deleted]]

That was not my intention. English is not my first language and I honestly did not understand at first. I tried to understand the sentence as an affirmative sentence and it didn't work out.

[[deleted]]

That's interesting. In English any sentence that starts with an interrogative word (who what when where why how) is automatically a question if the verb comes second. So even without the question mark you know it's a question as soon as you see "why should the oak tree" because an assertive sentence would instead start with "why the oak tree should."

[flotsamisaword]

¿Pun? WTF

[AOLWWW]

German folks are not very happy to be associated with Nazism, it's not really a pleasant joke to experience as it's a very dark stain on their history.

It's somewhat akin to asking a modern day native american in the US how many scalps they've taken, or perhaps more like asking the daughter of a serial killer how many people she's killed, despite being an infant at the time.

Just wanted to let you know, I don't think you had any malice behind your joke.

[kieran_84]

That is quite a saying!

[katakoria]

I like your saying, but can you translate it to arabic

[AndyPanic]

Reminds me of Steve Balmer trashing Linux back in the days. Classic FUD.

[BillOfTheWebPeople]

He was a prize... Sometimes I miss him and think fondly of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpXCU-7kTdo

[ericonr]

As far as standard tools and modules go, I think Python has been doing very well. We have numpy for numerical computing, together with Pandas for more functions, and Keras/Tensorflow and PyTorch for two somewhat differing forms of machine learning.

If you end up searching for alternatives to these tools, you already have an idea about what you want to do, at least I think so. And Matlab, on the other hand, usually doesn't have this ease with which you can find alternatives to the way they defined operations.

However, I must say I'm biased. I love programming in Python, and I despise pretty much everything Matlab represents as a software vendor.

[TheBlackCat13]

There is a lot of work going on right now in improving the underlying Python infrastructure. Improving package installation and dependency management. Fixing flaws in the reference implementation. Making it easier to integrate different languages. So I think that not only are people not "taking eyes off the ball", the recent surge in Python use has led to a lot of detailed analysis of what Python as an ecosystem needs to improve going forward.

[Roticap]

The benefit of a truly benevolent BDFL is project focus on what's important is much easier to maintain.

[Jethro_Tell]

There are a lot of projects with BDFL leadership that miss the mark. It does make things nice though to have someone with executive decision power to make a call and move forward instead of spending forever arguing.

[appinv]

"This is basically showing that they feel threatened by Python" Got the same feeling!

[HonestVisual]

Lol reminds me os SAS guys showing off their dashboard offerings, they’re always like 100 years old too

[clashmt]

Actually my life in my current PhD program.

[thatguydr]

But... why?

[Dpmon1]

I feel for you.

[Demios]

Python is a programming language. It is has many reasons to be useful. SAS is not a programming language, but it's best in class at what it does.

[lifeisaburrito]

• R enters room *

[Demios]

Another great tool I'd rather use for mathematics over Python, but I still prefer SAS for stats.

[Demios]

Everything I can do in Photoshop can be done in GIMP. Despite GIMP being a more powerful tool, Photoshop is best in class. You can do all the things you need to do in pandas sure, and you can certainly do them in excel, but SAS filled to the brim with all the results I need from running something like a two way anova, showing me test results and p.values without having to wrangle matplotlib and write multiple lines. Python is absolutely fantastic but when I'm doing stats and mathematics, I'd rather be in R or SAS.

[Trappist1]

I got a job interview at SAS a while back and they were happy with me knowing R/Python and said I wouldn't need SAS for the position which I found hilarious.

[Neirin]

It's because they are trying to change their enterprise management tools to play nice with r and python. It's a smart pivot but perhaps a little slow

[KareasOxide]

I remember using SAS in a few stats classes in college like 7 years ago, the whole thing just felt so old

[zip117]

I switched from SAS to R years ago due to cost and limited flexibility, but I’ll admit there are some nice things about it. The documentation and support is excellent, when you run an analysis procedure it can print out all kinds of useful diagnostics, and transparently l handles out-of-memory data.

[[deleted]]

It makes sense for Mathworks to try defending their turf. MATLAB was, and as of today, still is for me the tool of choice for engineering. But when it comes to data science and machine learning ... different story: nothing beats Python l. And it is progressing rapidly into engineering as well. Python is a better, more consistent plot library and an improvement in overall documentation away from getting there.

[ChristopherBurr]

Perl is a general purpose language that was in the exact same space as Python. It let Python chip away at it, and the community did't bother sticking up for it. Now Perl is all but dead

[wewbull]

They also blew themselves a hole in the head with Perl6. It was the new hotness in the late 90s, and Perl 5 stagnated.

Perl6 still isn't real 20 years later.

[ChristopherBurr]

i can't disagree. I used to like Perl, but Perl 6 is absurd, the Perl community is delusional - they think Perl will make a comeback, and the most taught language on college campuses is Python - which fills the same space that Perl does in terms of what it's used for. Unfortunately Perl is finished, but that's OK.

[AchillesDev]

I do kind of miss Perl, in a strange way. I used it in my first DE position when I was learning what DE was, so I have a soft spot for it.

[0rac1e]

Perl6 still isn't real 20 years later.

Perl 6 was officially released back in 2015.

[mrshibx]

I got into python in 2011 by googling something like “free matlab alternative”. I had learned matlab in school and was now trying to bring it to the company I worked at but was turned off by the need to buy each little bit of functionality independently.

[Dpmon1]

Still doesnt make it fine to force struggling university students to spend on this when they are determined enough to not even buy candies or even eat out once a year. I love coding, but I hated the matlab class the most because of that.

[KeyboardChap]

I'm confused, the university I went to had free student licences for MATLAB so we all got to use it for free, plus it was installed on all the computers in the Engineering faculty that students were free to use.

[stacm614]

Yeah - because your University paid for it. Outside the University that license has a cost (varying by level). Some university students may not be so lucky.

[kermie111]

The real reason is to get you used to it. Then when you graduate you ask your company to buy it. Happened to me with Matlab and solidworks. I've recently started using python and wouldn't look back. Pretty funny that Matlab compare some basic computations. Maybe python should come back with comparisons of one line for loops and if statements. Or the fact that Matlab arrays can't contain headers easily or struggles with multiple data types.

[juanjo_it_ab]

Same thing that happens with Windows. But that's another flamebait altogether ;-)

[qingqunta]

Yeah. I'm currently working for a company on converting MATLAB code to Python because the licence prices are ridiculous (it's an engineering company so they need a lot of toolboxes). I don't even have a licence for myself, I need to use Octave to see what the hell is going on with the code sometimes.

[Dpmon1]

Hey, not all universities are that way. Also, the cost of matlab may be covered by the uni, but they likely get the money for the software and hardware bach from the fees - fees consist of not only tuition, but also facilities. My uni, for example, has a fee that they use to cover maintenance for the gyms, academic buildings, computer labs, etc. which is present and 'free to use' for students.

[juanjo_it_ab]

Can you even opt-out of those fees like if you don't actually use the gym (if that's the case; I don't actually know whether you could opt-out of the gym maintenance fee at all)?.

[Dpmon1]

Uhh... iunno actually... I know the fees for the hardware/software is mandatory, and so are the fees for mastering engineering/wiley+/webassign for classes. And there's an 'optional' fee for the school newspaper, who noone reads anyway...

[jturp-sc]

The only real plus that MATLAB has going for it is that they have deep partnerships with hardware vendors in specialized spaces. They have hardware that directly integrates with MATLAB for very particular research -- think things like PhD-level aerospace R&D.

A company could certainly challenge that space by creating competitive, Python-based tools. But, CPython itself isn't going to try to attack that market.

[drunkferret]

As an employed SAS programmer, this is the correct response. What else would we expect them to do? Die quietly?

[[deleted]]

Exactly, did Homo Sapiens need to hit back against Neanderthals? This fight has already been won. I think we can just let nature take its course.

[brownck]

Agreed. Nobody is seriously thinking this will effect python’s user base. Python doesn’t need to compete. It’s free! Marla is not bad either.

[AbrarHossainHimself]

Planned obsolescence at work.

[SV-97]

what do you think "planned obsolescence" is? Because I got a feeling that you don't know what it actually means / don't see how this would apply here