I am currently doing my BA degree for chemical eng. And i have to say that i do massively appreciate the “on ramp” course Matlab offers. It was such a huge help getting into scripting for the first time.
Octave is a great alternative. Matrix operations are really intiutive in MATLAB.
I think it depends on what you are trying to do, but I generally agree. I definitely use python a lot more now that I am primarily in industry. The tools that Mathworks has developed are exceptionally good for some niche applications. It is vastly easier to model heat transfer, or tune a simulated PID, or dip your toes into deep learning, or do a variety of other tasks that Mathworks has built into MATLAB on that platform than it would be to build a similar application (gui included) in python. A professor COULD prebuild those tools in python, but that is a lot of work. I feel like, similar to how publishing companies offer pre-made slides and lectures to professors if they use their newest edition book, MATLAB makes professors lives easier for teaching their undergrads. Modelling heat transfer between two buried parallel pipes was one of the first things we did in my Intro to Mechanical Engineering class, and that would have been a semester project for a junior level class at least, if it had been required to be completed in python. In grad school, I have had classes that require both MATLAB and Python, and I have worked in labs that use both.
I've had this conversation with MATHWORK support team and they're really embedded in this marketing model where they are focused on retaining Big corporates (Boeing , GE etc) and don't give rat's A** about students / Hobbyists. I pay $300 every year for their home license which , functionally speaking, is much inferior to what Python can do for FREE. The only reason I am paying for this license is because MATLAB is quite popular in my industry and I have to keep my MATLAB skills sharp.
As someone who's utilizing both programming languages, I would say that Matlab did a great job in expressing everything in matrix form plus the training and support that you can get from the Mathworks team is IMMENSE with their self-paced training courses and TONS of documentations categorized based on Matlab toolboxes or applications. On the other hand, Python comes in handy in terms of speed and performance. Plus, there is a HUGE support coming from the Python community. In terms of syntax, I would say Matlab's are way easier to deal with than that of Python's plus debugging codes in Matlab is just a piece of cake. Although, I would have to agree that the opportunities available for Matlab in the industry is waaaaay slimmer than Python because essentially everyone is using Python. Regardless, I'm a fan of both programming languages. Both are powerful!
I’ve been using python for 12 years (I was that nerd 11 year old kid who came from from school and learned to code) and matlab for just above 2 years for my mecheng degree. Goddamn, I cannot express my hate for numpy after extensive use of matlab. Matlab makes vector and matric operations intuitive and an absolute breeze. In comparison, numpy has so many conditions and shit it makes my head hurt when something doesn’t work because the shape is (12,) instead of (12,1)
💯💯💯 agree. I love matlab I hate to see fail, but it feels like that's where it's headed if they don't open it up to more people😔😔
Thanks for the video, what distro do you recommend? or what platform and editor work better together? Thank you!
Thanks for sharing your opinion. I'm working on using a tool to design solar systems and one of the courses I looked up had topics on the use of matlab in their curriculum. Given the cost of matlab I think I will lean towards learning python and just apply the concepts using matlab to python. Appreciate your thoughts. 🙏
Thanks for sharing you input, it is very valuable and personally I think open source is the way to go.
Matlab is an entry level drug peddled by academic institutions and MathWorks is the supplier. I have worked at more companies that use Fortran than Matlab. And these days, almost everyone is using Python (an interpretid scripting language that is used to make C/C++ libraries like Numpy easy to use).
I‘ve used both Python and Matlab. For writing numerical code, I do prefer Matlab, but mainly because I‘m used to it. Python is a great alternative if you don’t have access to a license. I prefer Python for everything that extends beyond numerical data. It’s much easier to handle it. The main reason I use Matlab is because of Simulink, Stateflow and Simscape to design controls for real-time implementation. That’s for me the unique selling point. Debugable Simulation environment for your soon to be generated C-Code with all kinds of checks and CI-integration. There aren’t many alternatives to design real time control systems. Especially in Python.
Octave?
nice. been using python for a long time. I get a bit pissed off by it being too multidisciplinary, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. I see Julia as having a great potential as a programming language exactly because of this: it is not mixing the indie and professional world in a single box, and this is why I am learning Julia at the long term... Because... I don't know if you understand me. We start wanting to do a simulation and end writing an app in Flask... Have we missed the point? How far?
I'll be honest: I prefer Matlab. Even though I used Python a lot and multiple other technologies, I always found it a mess to work with most open source packages.
Python appears to be the most popular language for Machine learning no doubt, based on job applications ive been reading.
Currently studying material engineering and I want to know which one is better for me to learn?
The workspace environment in MATLAB is by far the thing I miss most when writing code in Python because it essentially acts as a variable debugger. If anyone can suggest a similar system for Python that would be great, but none exist as far as I know. Element-wise operations in MATLAB are more intuitive to me (even though the dot operator syntax is hot garbage) and large matrix operations seem to be considerably faster from my experience coding FEM and FDM solvers from scratch. Python is just better though and I'm fully making the switch. It's free, open-source, and can be used for fun projects on the side in addition to more serious computational work.
Thanks Vincent for sharing your thughts they are really insightful.
@meu22422