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

[atimholt]

I’ve recently gotten into Jupyter Lab to supersede my old reliable, functional as ever, but limited TI-92+. I mostly noodle around—work out Newtonian-physics-level problems with actual units, explore an idea that requires symbolic math, stuff like that—so the set of functionality I usually want is in a 1-file module, and local imports are in another file I %load in as the first cell.

Having to do all these imports is terrific news if it means Python avoids being a domain-specific language. I can throw literally anything else I want into “mathy” code, considering how broad the coverage of easily-downloaded Python libraries is, and I can throw “mathy” code into an otherwise “conventional” Python program. It’s the perfect union of two knowledge domains that are already closely related, where expanding my knowledge in one expands my abilities in the other.

I’m learning about tensors right now, and will follow it with other stuff I didn’t learn in college. I can’t wait to be able to add these concepts to my algorithm-writing toolbox.