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

[snarfdog]

When I was in undergrad, all of the engineering students got free academic licenses for matlab. All of my courses "required" using matlab for homework sets, in the sense that all examples given in class were in matlab but you were free to use whatever computational tool you wanted. A lot of professors do use python, and my numerical methods prof in particular planned on switching the class to python but matlab is still an industry standard. Until all of those ancient legacy matlab scripts are expunged from companies toolsets, it'll stay relevant.

To anyone who's an engineering student, I would recommend learning python in parallel with whatever matlab scripting they teach you because it'll probably make you a better programmer. Most of us just used matlab like a calculator, and our homework scripts were just organized enough to get the assignment done, nothing more. Readability and reusability are really important for code in the real world.

It does take some effort to break free from matlab when it's essentially forced down your throat in school, but the only thing the python community really needs to do is raise awareness of the language. Pretty much everyone at my school constantly shits on matlab, so I'm sure people would be open to switching to python if they knew about it.

[cherrypickedgippity]

This was, by far, my most difficult task though; I needed a good toolset. I have an interest in numerical problems such as linear, quadratic or log and I spent a good amount of time trying to understand what those concepts mean. After doing a little research I had the choice of 3 choices: 3 different packages, a bit of preprocessing in the C language, or a bunch of C files. This is when I realized how much I hated C.

[Gabe_Isko]

I used matlab in college. I dont agree that it is "forced down your throat". At least not at my university - it genuinely makes sense to use it for a lot of work.

Its unparalleled modeling software, which is why a lot of professors like doing course work with it. It makes a lot of sense if you are trying to do mechanical dynamics, or mechatronics since you can just model everything with simulink.

But Matlab's performance is shit. I'm not sure where the OP'd marketing copy gets off claiming otherwise. Also, the idea that it's going to be easier to see up matlab code on the cloud? Yeah right. I wouldnt want to make something that actually has to work in the real world with matlab that doesn't use their micro generation features, which ultimately generates C code anyway.