Matlab is a calculator. It is a really nice calculator for some things, but its definitely a calculator with programming language features bolted on. I strongly

Matlab is a calculator. It is a really nice calculator for some things, but its definitely a calculator with programming language features bolted on. I strongly believe that Matlab is unsuitable for writing most software. It is nonetheless extremely popular in some engineering fields for write-only scripts. I'll never forget when I took a controls class and we were given an option to use Python on our own or matlab with guidance and support from the professor and TAs. I chose Python since my background was slightly different that most of the students, but most everyone chose matlab. It was highly amusing to watch the whole lab suffer for days because no one understood matlab's semantics. (The base framework had been written by some expert who retired and made extensive use of both handle and value classes. Problem was, no one still involved with the clas knew what the difference was. Meanwhile, I spent about 6 seconds longer writing out np.dot a few times. Matlab is good for math. Most software (even math heavy stuff, EM simulations, etc) has little math (in terms of source, no execution time).