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Matlab has its quirks, but I've never come across a better IDE for debugging 'scientific' code/scripts. Seeing current values by hovering over variables, the ab

by ggcdn 7y ago

Matlab has its quirks, but I've never come across a better IDE for debugging 'scientific' code/scripts. Seeing current values by hovering over variables, the ability to pause and execute some 'testing' code, or overwrite things and carry on, being able to easily edit arrays/matrices in an excel-like table, having matrix arithmetic that doesn't look like shit when written as code... these are things that I find very useful. I use it in my field (structural engineering) for those reason alone, even if it might be slower, or more difficult to accomplish certain tasks.

viraj_shah 7y ago
I definitely understand this point. Another alternative is Python (with numpy, scipy and matplotlib) using the Pycharm IDE. It has many of the features you're talking about.
eigenvalue 7y ago
You should check out Spyder, included with the Anaconda Python distribution. It includes most of what makes MATLAB a productive IDE. In particular, you can inspect various types of variables (including Pandas tables in a nice grid view) and watch how the contents changes as the code executes.
- stinos 7y ago
  Spyder is good for inspecting, coming close to Matlab (for the rather simple stuff I use it for) but it's a lacking on the code editing/browsing/plugin front. VSCode on the other hand is pretty good for the latter, is still lacking what I look for in Spyder and Matlab (i.e. if I'm debugging something, I just want a REPL in which I can type with full syntax completion, enter multiline text etc). As a result I mostly use both at the same time.. Though I wouldn't be surprised if VSCode is going to get better at one point, on github there are already multiple issues dedicated to this with at least some activity of the team.
0xd171 7y ago
I've used quite a bit of R and Python and I've never touched Matlab. Similarly to your comment - Python has nothing that comes even close to RStudio for working with data. Jupyter, Spyder, PyCharm, VSCode/Atom with data science extensions - none of them are as good.
- spinningslate 7y ago
  Agreed. R might not have the breadth of Python, and it's less conventional as a language (procedural, vector based). It has some key strengths though: 1. RStudio IDE as you note. It's a really great, focused IDE for doing most of the things people do with R. 2. Shiny. Such a well conceived and constructed toolkit for building interactive apps 3. The package ecosystem: lots of really good quality, high performance packages 4. RStudio the company, who contribute a lot to the community - both open source (RStudio IDE, Shiny, tidyverse, ...) and commercial (RSConnect, Package Manager). From a language design pov I like Julia over Python over R. But for number-heavy computing I prefer the R ecosystem overall.
  - kgwgk 7y ago
    One of the packages created by RStudio is reticulate, which allows integration with python. They have also recently added some support for python to the IDE: https://rstudio.github.io/reticulate/articles/rstudio_ide.html https://rstudio.github.io/reticulate/articles/rstudio_ide.ht...
  - 0xd171 7y ago
    On the other hand, base R has to maintain (some degree of?) compatibility with S. Which means that all the strange design choices and weird behaviour in base R have little hope of ever changing. No number of additional packages can fix this.
    - tylermw 7y ago
      There is one nice thing about R core's focus on maintaining backwards compatibility, however: code from a decade ago (more often than not) will run without a hiccup on current versions of R. Related tweets: https://twitter.com/hrbrmstr/status/1124016682413039616 https://twitter.com/hrbrmstr/status/1124016682413039616 https://twitter.com/hrbrmstr/status/1122186751987073025 https://twitter.com/hrbrmstr/status/1122186751987073025
mlevental 7y ago
pycharm now has exactly the layout of matlab https://i.imgur.com/epByE8g.png https://i.imgur.com/epByE8g.png

by ggcdn 7y ago

viraj_shah 7y ago

I definitely understand this point. Another alternative is Python (with numpy, scipy and matplotlib) using the Pycharm IDE. It has many of the features you're talking about.

eigenvalue 7y ago

You should check out Spyder, included with the Anaconda Python distribution. It includes most of what makes MATLAB a productive IDE. In particular, you can inspect various types of variables (including Pandas tables in a nice grid view) and watch how the contents changes as the code executes.

stinos 7y ago
Spyder is good for inspecting, coming close to Matlab (for the rather simple stuff I use it for) but it's a lacking on the code editing/browsing/plugin front. VSCode on the other hand is pretty good for the latter, is still lacking what I look for in Spyder and Matlab (i.e. if I'm debugging something, I just want a REPL in which I can type with full syntax completion, enter multiline text etc). As a result I mostly use both at the same time.. Though I wouldn't be surprised if VSCode is going to get better at one point, on github there are already multiple issues dedicated to this with at least some activity of the team.

0xd171 7y ago

I've used quite a bit of R and Python and I've never touched Matlab. Similarly to your comment - Python has nothing that comes even close to RStudio for working with data. Jupyter, Spyder, PyCharm, VSCode/Atom with data science extensions - none of them are as good.

spinningslate 7y ago
Agreed. R might not have the breadth of Python, and it's less conventional as a language (procedural, vector based). It has some key strengths though: 1. RStudio IDE as you note. It's a really great, focused IDE for doing most of the things people do with R. 2. Shiny. Such a well conceived and constructed toolkit for building interactive apps 3. The package ecosystem: lots of really good quality, high performance packages 4. RStudio the company, who contribute a lot to the community - both open source (RStudio IDE, Shiny, tidyverse, ...) and commercial (RSConnect, Package Manager). From a language design pov I like Julia over Python over R. But for number-heavy computing I prefer the R ecosystem overall.
- kgwgk 7y ago
  One of the packages created by RStudio is reticulate, which allows integration with python. They have also recently added some support for python to the IDE: https://rstudio.github.io/reticulate/articles/rstudio_ide.html https://rstudio.github.io/reticulate/articles/rstudio_ide.ht...
- 0xd171 7y ago
  On the other hand, base R has to maintain (some degree of?) compatibility with S. Which means that all the strange design choices and weird behaviour in base R have little hope of ever changing. No number of additional packages can fix this.
  - tylermw 7y ago
    There is one nice thing about R core's focus on maintaining backwards compatibility, however: code from a decade ago (more often than not) will run without a hiccup on current versions of R. Related tweets: https://twitter.com/hrbrmstr/status/1124016682413039616 https://twitter.com/hrbrmstr/status/1124016682413039616 https://twitter.com/hrbrmstr/status/1122186751987073025 https://twitter.com/hrbrmstr/status/1122186751987073025

mlevental 7y ago

pycharm now has exactly the layout of matlab https://i.imgur.com/epByE8g.png https://i.imgur.com/epByE8g.png