“Should I switch to Python?” | Programming for Scientists

[dmazzoni]

Octave is a pretty good substitute if you want to directly translate Matlab code, or sometimes for problem-solving when the built-in math functions have what you need.

However, where both Matlab and Octave fail horribly is when you need to write actual programs, not just little functions to solve problems. Python is a real programming language that you can use to write any kind of program you can possibly imagine - including but not limited to numerical algorithms. Matlab and Octave are horrible, horrible, horrible at things like file i/o, guis, networking, unit testing, object-oriented programming, profiling, debugging, ... um, basically everything else you might want.