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Mindshare is a bit fuzzy, but at least among academics, I do think its closed-ness has made it lose some of its luster in recent years. Mainly because the bigge

Mindshare is a bit fuzzy, but at least among academics, I do think its closed-ness has made it lose some of its luster in recent years. Mainly because the bigger focus on reproducibility and open code and such has made people feel like it's not quite the "right" way of doing things, especially if you're preparing something for public consumption (vs. private experimentation), compared to e.g. the more community-based and open Python math ecosystem. Ten or fifteen years ago people didn't think about that as much, so people used Mathematica happily. Nowadays of course many people still use Mathematica, but, unless my circle is totally unrepresentative, a good number feel a little more uneasy and maybe slightly guilty doing so, and have at least a desire and vague plans to switch if/when they find time or the alternatives get better.

blt 11y ago
As a researcher currently working in Matlab, if/when I release code publicly I'll be porting to C++ and writing bindings to other languages. It doesn't feel like I'm really contributing much to the community if I release code that requires thousands of dollars to run.
- exDM69 11y ago
  GNU Octave is a free/open alternative for Matlab, which is mostly compatible with things built in Matlab. Just make sure your code runs in Octave and you don't have to do any porting. There's no viable alternative to Mathematica, let alone a compatible one. Even for the basic stuff I've used Mathematica (student license) for, basic symbolic integration, differentiation and simplification, I get inferior results from Sympy and Maxima. I haven't tried XCas yet, some say it is better. And this is only talking about the computer algebra capabilities. Mathematica has all sorts of nice tools for doing plots, interactive UIs and other stuff.
tudorw 11y ago
Here's a quick slideshow on Software Sustainability and Reproducible Research in Remote Sensing from Robin Wilson, https://speakerdeck.com/robintw/software-sustainability-and-reproducible-research-in-remote-sensing https://speakerdeck.com/robintw/software-sustainability-and-... he also writes a blog that often discusses the subject in the broader sense http://blog.rtwilson.com/in-praise-of-projecttemplate-for-reproducible-research/ http://blog.rtwilson.com/in-praise-of-projecttemplate-for-re...

blt 11y ago

As a researcher currently working in Matlab, if/when I release code publicly I'll be porting to C++ and writing bindings to other languages. It doesn't feel like I'm really contributing much to the community if I release code that requires thousands of dollars to run.

exDM69 11y ago
GNU Octave is a free/open alternative for Matlab, which is mostly compatible with things built in Matlab. Just make sure your code runs in Octave and you don't have to do any porting. There's no viable alternative to Mathematica, let alone a compatible one. Even for the basic stuff I've used Mathematica (student license) for, basic symbolic integration, differentiation and simplification, I get inferior results from Sympy and Maxima. I haven't tried XCas yet, some say it is better. And this is only talking about the computer algebra capabilities. Mathematica has all sorts of nice tools for doing plots, interactive UIs and other stuff.

tudorw 11y ago

Here's a quick slideshow on Software Sustainability and Reproducible Research in Remote Sensing from Robin Wilson, https://speakerdeck.com/robintw/software-sustainability-and-reproducible-research-in-remote-sensing https://speakerdeck.com/robintw/software-sustainability-and-... he also writes a blog that often discusses the subject in the broader sense http://blog.rtwilson.com/in-praise-of-projecttemplate-for-reproducible-research/ http://blog.rtwilson.com/in-praise-of-projecttemplate-for-re...