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> I've regretted that Octave hasn't done for Matlab what R did for S R was much more programmable that the other systems (except S) in that time -- while the R
by sampo 11y ago
> I've regretted that Octave hasn't done for Matlab what R did for S
R was much more programmable that the other systems (except S) in that time -- while the R language is not pretty, the scripting languages in SAS, Stata etc. were much worse. So R provided an improvement in people's workflow. Whereas Octave is just a free version of the same language as Matlab (with some small improvements).
So, switching from SAS, Stata, SPSS etc. to R provided an improvement in productivity, but switching from Matlab to Octave does not.
- jordigh 11y agoYou can make the same comparison between Fortran and Octave as you do betwenn SAS and R, and Octave at first did not even aim to be Matlab-compatible. Matlab compatibility came years later, as people using Matlab requested it. This is not the reason for why Octave has not overtaken Matlab. Maybe I should write a blog post about it.