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Short answer: because everybody uses Matlab in research. - Lots of libraries - Nice graphical interface - Lots of online help - Matrices as a first-class c

Short answer: because everybody uses Matlab in research. - Lots of libraries - Nice graphical interface - Lots of online help - Matrices as a first-class citizen I hate Matlab as much as the next guy, but it's deeply ingrained in academia.

bronz 11y ago
Someone down-voted me just for asking. I have no idea about any of this stuff and I was just genuinely curious. Apparently people are pretty polarized about Matlab. Thanks for explaining that to me.
- omginternets 11y ago
  >Someone down-voted me just for asking. People take the internet way too seriously :/ >Apparently people are pretty polarized about Matlab Yes, very much so. Much of the contention comes from the obscene licensing prices coupled with the fact that its a terrible language.
  - tormeh 11y ago
    A terrible language with awesome libraries. In the language wars, libraries are king. I hate Matlab, but I've got to admit that the toolboxes are without peer.
    - pmoriarty 11y ago
      Perl had tons of awesome libraries. Yet Python, Ruby, and Go, which had virtually none compared to Perl when they started still became very popular, and are arguably more popular than Perl now.
  - daveguy 11y ago
    Incredible libraries, yes. But you may want to check out python with numpy, scipy, pandas, scikit-learn, etc. There are bundles like python (x,y) that bring them all together. Probably still want to stick with python 2.7 though (as most of scientific computing still does). This removes the tedious stumbling block that is forced unicode.
  - Maken 11y ago
    >obscene licensing prices You can always use Octave.
- david-given 11y ago
  It may be nitpicking, but the phrase you used ('Why do you think X?') is very common for making passive-aggressive contradictions. ("I have a smart cat." "Why do you think cats are smart?") If you've been hanging around the internet for a while you tend to start seeing an unspoken 'you idiot' on the end of it, even when it's not there. You could well have been downvoted more or less on reflex because of that.
- 7Z7 11y ago
  I'm guessing the downvotes have nothing to do with MatLab and more to do with your choice of phrasing (regardless of your actual intent). It reads less like you are asking a question, and more like "well yeah, duh, of course that's why they did that".
  - bronz 11y ago
    I appreciate your honest feedback but I have to disagree. The article was about software. The comments: > (him) This software was written in Matlab. Here is a link. > (me) Why do you think they wrote it in Matlab? I really don't understand how the intention of my question is ambiguous to anyone. But luckily this issue is completely trivial anyway I suppose.
- taco_emoji 11y ago
  I think they downvoted you because the phrasing is ambiguous between "what evidence do you have that it's written in Matlab" vs. "why do you think the creators chose Matlab" and they interpreted it as the former.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
I'd add: - That's what they teach you when you're a student.
torrionep 11y ago
Complete agreement - grad students have a few jobs they need to do and need to do quickly: 1) Large (within reason) easy matrix manipulations. MATLAB is fantastic at this. Matrices as first-class objects is so important, I don't know why more languages don't include them (though I am pleasantly unaware of the complications inherent to this). 2) Simple, decently pretty visualizations of data. 3) Trivial syntax. If you've programmed at all, it's easy to read MATLAB syntax. IMO, the only threat to MATLAB on the horizon for academic work is Python + the associated SciPy tools (sckikit-learn, etc); especially as bundled in SPYDER, which I have had a blast with. But since cost is typically not an issue at a university (MATLAB is paid for by someone else), and everyone already speaks MATLAB, there's not a real impetus to change. (Julia may be int he running, too, but SPYDER seems more user friendly at this point) Also, as someone who's been through this a dozen times before - as soon as a professor says "make me this visualization, the command in MATLAB is this" and the grad student says "SciPy (or whatever) doesn't have that", that student is converting his data to a text file, reading it into MATLAB, and making that damn plot :)
a-dub 11y ago
MATLAB is a terrible programming language. MATLAB is a fantastic workbench for exploring data and implementing numerical algorithms. There's a lot of excitement around the numerical computing tools that have sprouted up around Python, but I find the visualization capabilities to be lacking and writing numerical code in Python is really quite clunky where the same expressions in MATLAB are much more clear and concise. In short: If you're writing lots of loops and conditionals, MATLAB is the wrong tool. If you're analyzing data, applying linear algebra or exploring using the tools of mathematics, signal processing and machine learning... it really can't be beat. Everything is just there, everything just works, everything is very well documented and there's a MATLAB implementation of everything new. Only bummer is that it's expensive.

bronz 11y ago

Someone down-voted me just for asking. I have no idea about any of this stuff and I was just genuinely curious. Apparently people are pretty polarized about Matlab. Thanks for explaining that to me.

omginternets 11y ago
>Someone down-voted me just for asking. People take the internet way too seriously :/ >Apparently people are pretty polarized about Matlab Yes, very much so. Much of the contention comes from the obscene licensing prices coupled with the fact that its a terrible language.
- tormeh 11y ago
  A terrible language with awesome libraries. In the language wars, libraries are king. I hate Matlab, but I've got to admit that the toolboxes are without peer.
  - pmoriarty 11y ago
    Perl had tons of awesome libraries. Yet Python, Ruby, and Go, which had virtually none compared to Perl when they started still became very popular, and are arguably more popular than Perl now.
- daveguy 11y ago
  Incredible libraries, yes. But you may want to check out python with numpy, scipy, pandas, scikit-learn, etc. There are bundles like python (x,y) that bring them all together. Probably still want to stick with python 2.7 though (as most of scientific computing still does). This removes the tedious stumbling block that is forced unicode.
- Maken 11y ago
  >obscene licensing prices You can always use Octave.
david-given 11y ago
It may be nitpicking, but the phrase you used ('Why do you think X?') is very common for making passive-aggressive contradictions. ("I have a smart cat." "Why do you think cats are smart?") If you've been hanging around the internet for a while you tend to start seeing an unspoken 'you idiot' on the end of it, even when it's not there. You could well have been downvoted more or less on reflex because of that.
7Z7 11y ago
I'm guessing the downvotes have nothing to do with MatLab and more to do with your choice of phrasing (regardless of your actual intent). It reads less like you are asking a question, and more like "well yeah, duh, of course that's why they did that".
- bronz 11y ago
  I appreciate your honest feedback but I have to disagree. The article was about software. The comments: > (him) This software was written in Matlab. Here is a link. > (me) Why do you think they wrote it in Matlab? I really don't understand how the intention of my question is ambiguous to anyone. But luckily this issue is completely trivial anyway I suppose.
taco_emoji 11y ago
I think they downvoted you because the phrasing is ambiguous between "what evidence do you have that it's written in Matlab" vs. "why do you think the creators chose Matlab" and they interpreted it as the former.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

I'd add: - That's what they teach you when you're a student.

torrionep 11y ago

Complete agreement - grad students have a few jobs they need to do and need to do quickly: 1) Large (within reason) easy matrix manipulations. MATLAB is fantastic at this. Matrices as first-class objects is so important, I don't know why more languages don't include them (though I am pleasantly unaware of the complications inherent to this). 2) Simple, decently pretty visualizations of data. 3) Trivial syntax. If you've programmed at all, it's easy to read MATLAB syntax. IMO, the only threat to MATLAB on the horizon for academic work is Python + the associated SciPy tools (sckikit-learn, etc); especially as bundled in SPYDER, which I have had a blast with. But since cost is typically not an issue at a university (MATLAB is paid for by someone else), and everyone already speaks MATLAB, there's not a real impetus to change. (Julia may be int he running, too, but SPYDER seems more user friendly at this point) Also, as someone who's been through this a dozen times before - as soon as a professor says "make me this visualization, the command in MATLAB is this" and the grad student says "SciPy (or whatever) doesn't have that", that student is converting his data to a text file, reading it into MATLAB, and making that damn plot :)

a-dub 11y ago

MATLAB is a terrible programming language. MATLAB is a fantastic workbench for exploring data and implementing numerical algorithms. There's a lot of excitement around the numerical computing tools that have sprouted up around Python, but I find the visualization capabilities to be lacking and writing numerical code in Python is really quite clunky where the same expressions in MATLAB are much more clear and concise. In short: If you're writing lots of loops and conditionals, MATLAB is the wrong tool. If you're analyzing data, applying linear algebra or exploring using the tools of mathematics, signal processing and machine learning... it really can't be beat. Everything is just there, everything just works, everything is very well documented and there's a MATLAB implementation of everything new. Only bummer is that it's expensive.