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At times my mechanical engineering courses at university felt like MATLAB tutorials. You had to use it, no way around it. Good luck once you're out of universit

At times my mechanical engineering courses at university felt like MATLAB tutorials. You had to use it, no way around it. Good luck once you're out of university and want to start your own thing, you won't be able to afford it. The computer science courses in contrast preferred open source tools over proprietary ones.

tacos 11y ago
The guy cutting my lawn spent more on his tools than MATLAB costs.
- MadManE 11y ago
  I also spent more on video games in the last year than it costs. What's your point? That it's so cheap he should just buy it, even if there are better, cheaper tools out there? That seems like a waste to me.
  - tacos 11y ago
    I was refuting this silly argument: "Good luck once you're out of university and want to start your own thing, you won't be able to afford it." Yup, startups have costs. Go figure. And sometimes you get what you pay for. I wish I'd learned Matlab sooner. I still love the Python ecosystem, but Matlab's replaced a LOT of dicking around in Python for me. It does completely different things, and certain things are trivial or impossible in each place. Worth learning both.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    Octave is 'cheaper' but I can't call it 'better'.
- juliendorra 11y ago
  Of course it's not only about the price. Open and free tools are important for reproducibility of research, including computer science research, economic research, etc. Having open access articles/papers, we are now moving to open availability of data for reproducibility of results. Open tools are the third component, allowing a complete reproducibility of research, unencumbered by arbitrary lock-in. It is then important that we teach and share open and free tool with science learners, so that as they progress they can freely share fully reproducible research, with anyone in the world. [edit] in summary, in the age of open access, FLOSS science tools become a must -- and a collective responsibility.
  - tacos 11y ago
    The most important thing is giving brilliant minds the best tools, period. If those tools make it impossible to share data, or publish results reproducibly, then I'd agree that those tools suck. However Matlab reads and writes every damn format under the sun. Don't confuse "create, invent and build" with "export and publish." They're fundamentally different tasks.
Jtsummers 11y ago
Student copies start at $99 [0]. Copies for home use start at $145[1]. This is not outrageously expensive. Students can spend more on a single textbook that'll be used for only one semester. For home users, this is the price of 7-10 dinners out. And as others have pointed out, there's also Gnu Octave, which is reasonably (or used to be) compatible, and free. And where it's not source-compatible, it still largely retains the same semantics and underlying models so knowledge of Matlab can be easily transferred. [0] http://www.mathworks.com/pricing-licensing/index.html?intendeduse=student&prodcode=ML http://www.mathworks.com/pricing-licensing/index.html?intend... [1] http://www.mathworks.com/pricing-licensing/index.html?intendeduse=home&prodcode=ML http://www.mathworks.com/pricing-licensing/index.html?intend...

tacos 11y ago

The guy cutting my lawn spent more on his tools than MATLAB costs.

MadManE 11y ago
I also spent more on video games in the last year than it costs. What's your point? That it's so cheap he should just buy it, even if there are better, cheaper tools out there? That seems like a waste to me.
- tacos 11y ago
  I was refuting this silly argument: "Good luck once you're out of university and want to start your own thing, you won't be able to afford it." Yup, startups have costs. Go figure. And sometimes you get what you pay for. I wish I'd learned Matlab sooner. I still love the Python ecosystem, but Matlab's replaced a LOT of dicking around in Python for me. It does completely different things, and certain things are trivial or impossible in each place. Worth learning both.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  Octave is 'cheaper' but I can't call it 'better'.
juliendorra 11y ago
Of course it's not only about the price. Open and free tools are important for reproducibility of research, including computer science research, economic research, etc. Having open access articles/papers, we are now moving to open availability of data for reproducibility of results. Open tools are the third component, allowing a complete reproducibility of research, unencumbered by arbitrary lock-in. It is then important that we teach and share open and free tool with science learners, so that as they progress they can freely share fully reproducible research, with anyone in the world. [edit] in summary, in the age of open access, FLOSS science tools become a must -- and a collective responsibility.
- tacos 11y ago
  The most important thing is giving brilliant minds the best tools, period. If those tools make it impossible to share data, or publish results reproducibly, then I'd agree that those tools suck. However Matlab reads and writes every damn format under the sun. Don't confuse "create, invent and build" with "export and publish." They're fundamentally different tasks.

Jtsummers 11y ago

Student copies start at $99 [0]. Copies for home use start at $145[1]. This is not outrageously expensive. Students can spend more on a single textbook that'll be used for only one semester. For home users, this is the price of 7-10 dinners out. And as others have pointed out, there's also Gnu Octave, which is reasonably (or used to be) compatible, and free. And where it's not source-compatible, it still largely retains the same semantics and underlying models so knowledge of Matlab can be easily transferred. [0] http://www.mathworks.com/pricing-licensing/index.html?intendeduse=student&prodcode=ML http://www.mathworks.com/pricing-licensing/index.html?intend... [1] http://www.mathworks.com/pricing-licensing/index.html?intendeduse=home&prodcode=ML http://www.mathworks.com/pricing-licensing/index.html?intend...