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Fair, but it would be really interesting to pit an avid MATLAB person against an avid numerical Python person in a data analysis race. I've found that you can

by a-dub 8y ago

Fair, but it would be really interesting to pit an avid MATLAB person against an avid numerical Python person in a data analysis race. I've found that you can generally do most things you can do with MATLAB in Python, but the experience in MATLAB is buttery smooth while the experience with numerical Python is clunky and obnoxious (whether it be all the useless textual noise in the code itself, the inferior quality of the plotting and visualization capabilities or the fact the Python scientific computing library ecosystem is so disjoint (this thing can handle pandas frames, this other thing needs numpy vectors, this other thing expects Python lists, whatever). I had high hopes for Julia, I have a test for it. How annoying is it to plot(sin(0:0.01:6*pi)) out of the box? For the extreme challenge question, how annoying is it to also open a new plot window and plot(cos(0:0.01:6:pi)) alongside it. I want to be able to pan around and inspect these complicated functions. So far, it has not yet passed the qualifiers.

ChrisRackauckas 8y ago
>I had high hopes for Julia, I have a test for it. How annoying is it to plot(sin(0:0.01:6*pi)) out of the box? For the extreme challenge question, how annoying is it to also open a new plot window and plot(cos(0:0.01:6:pi)) alongside it. I want to be able to pan around and inspect these complicated functions. Just use the plot command in Makie.jl? This is a nice first few commands to check the install.
- a-dub 8y ago
  In 0.6, I tried Plots.jl. It seemed pretty nice, but then if I tried to do a whos() to see what variables were in the workspace, it would go out to lunch for >20s. Not just the first time, every time I simply wanted to see what I had in RAM. This didn't seem very useful to me for interactive use. In 1.0, I tried Plots.jl again. I tried adding it using the package manager and it blew up trying to build. This is with no special state from me, I unpacked the 1.0.0 release, started it and did Pkg.add('Plots')... boom. There's such a great story around it and I really want to like it, but this is like extremely basic suitably to task stuff... Who knows, maybe I'm using it wrong.
  - ced 8y ago
    Sorry you had a bad experience. I found that 1.0 generally works, but there were so many changes in the language that several bugs have cropped up. 1.0.1 should fix a lot of them.
noobermin 8y ago
My sentiment wasn't really to pit "matlab people" against "python people". Tools are tools, with different aspects and uses, and people and their abilities aren't tied to their tools for the most part. I don't use matlab but I don't consider "matlab people" as bad scientists or limited in terms of what they can potentially do due to their tool. The limit of access for matlab due to licensing and expensive external modules such is the problem in my view. That isn't a critique at all of matlab's actual numerical and scientific utility, of course it's apt in that arena otherwise people wouldn't use it.

by a-dub 8y ago

ChrisRackauckas 8y ago

>I had high hopes for Julia, I have a test for it. How annoying is it to plot(sin(0:0.01:6*pi)) out of the box? For the extreme challenge question, how annoying is it to also open a new plot window and plot(cos(0:0.01:6:pi)) alongside it. I want to be able to pan around and inspect these complicated functions. Just use the plot command in Makie.jl? This is a nice first few commands to check the install.

a-dub 8y ago
In 0.6, I tried Plots.jl. It seemed pretty nice, but then if I tried to do a whos() to see what variables were in the workspace, it would go out to lunch for >20s. Not just the first time, every time I simply wanted to see what I had in RAM. This didn't seem very useful to me for interactive use. In 1.0, I tried Plots.jl again. I tried adding it using the package manager and it blew up trying to build. This is with no special state from me, I unpacked the 1.0.0 release, started it and did Pkg.add('Plots')... boom. There's such a great story around it and I really want to like it, but this is like extremely basic suitably to task stuff... Who knows, maybe I'm using it wrong.
- ced 8y ago
  Sorry you had a bad experience. I found that 1.0 generally works, but there were so many changes in the language that several bugs have cropped up. 1.0.1 should fix a lot of them.

noobermin 8y ago

My sentiment wasn't really to pit "matlab people" against "python people". Tools are tools, with different aspects and uses, and people and their abilities aren't tied to their tools for the most part. I don't use matlab but I don't consider "matlab people" as bad scientists or limited in terms of what they can potentially do due to their tool. The limit of access for matlab due to licensing and expensive external modules such is the problem in my view. That isn't a critique at all of matlab's actual numerical and scientific utility, of course it's apt in that arena otherwise people wouldn't use it.