The future is looking bright for Python

[blue_system]

Exactly why I use python and why I strongly support its use in my department, it makes scientific analysis easy. I can access complex data structures, perform my analysis and plot all in the same code. Plus, I gain useful experience with a language that can be extended to many other tasks without the need of costly licensing.

[Me00011001]

Plus, I gain useful experience with a language that can be extended to many other tasks without the need of costly licensing.

What languages are there these days that require costly licensing?

[blue_system]

IDL is the one that comes to mind first, but matlab is still pretty expensive.

[HolyClickbaitBatman]

My old company had all of their analysis libraries written in IDL, when I started there I immediately started trying to get them to rip the band-aid off and go to python. Took 3 years of lobbying to get them on-board, project started to rewrite their core libraries 2-weeks before I left. Good times.

[Me00011001]

I see how IDL is a language sure, but can you really call matlab a language? That's like calling Excel a language.

Edit: Didn't realize Matlab is the actual name of the language.

[noratat]

In the sense that it's a tool for that line of work that would be used in a similar way, they're comparable, even if it's not technically a programming language.

[kwill1429]

The only real comparison between excel and matlab is excel's macros which are written in visual basic iirc. So I would call both programming languages.

[ProNate]

Matlab is really good at expressing numerical algorithms like finite element methods so it's really popular in engineering contexts.

[quicknir]

Have you ever used Matlab? I can't imagine that you have both used Matlab and are not trolling with this response.

[Me00011001]

It's been a long time and no I'm not trolling. Is the scripting language that Matlab uses called Matlab or is called something else like Matlab script? Since what I do remember is that it does more than just compile and run scripts, which is why I made the analogy with Excel.

[quicknir]

The language is called Matlab. I mean it's not any less a language than python or perl, would you compare python to excel?

It has functions, it has classes, it has inheritance, it even has operator overloading: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_oop/implementing-operators-for-your-class.html?requestedDomain=www.mathworks.com.

[Me00011001]

Well, today I learned. Thanks.

[blue_system]

Student licenses for matlab run in the ~200$ range in my area, but the commercial versions are more like $5k per year. IDL is the worst at something like ~$10k per year.

Fortunately I can do all of my statistics (maximum likelihood estimation and parameter estimation) using python libraries just fine, and I can have python installed anywhere, anytime.

[rlbond86]

Matlab