4 ms·

I'm really wondering if any HN users actually use Octave in their daily lives?

by vtail 16y ago

viraptor 16y ago
Used it a lot as a replacement for matlab at the university. Nowadays, I just fire up ipython when I need some calculations. Then again my calculations now are nowhere near the complexity of what I did then. If I ever need to go back to the big matrices, I know where to find scipy/numpy.
Bud 16y ago
Yeah. Doesn't everyone just whip out their HP 41CX?
makmanalp 16y ago
In robotics Matlab is pretty commonly used as a data analytics tool, and this gives me pretty much all of the basic functionality that I'd need.
Anechoic 16y ago
Yep: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2112620 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2112620
nkassis 16y ago
Yes, I work as a dev in the Neuroimaging field and Matlab and Octave are pretty entrenched. While I don't really use it for new development, I often have to used tools that depend on matlab.
- fluidcruft 16y ago
  I so wish SPM ran on octave.... It's not there yet but we've fixed a lot of octave bugs by throwing parts of SPM at it.
andrewcooke 16y ago
I'm writing some GPU code that is called from Matlab. I don't have a Matlab licence, so I test everything using Octave (it has mex support). Works just fine. This is consultancy work in geophysics. I'm writing code for a colleague to use (he does have a Matlab licence) who is working with a mining company.
- andrewcooke 16y ago
  Actually, if anyone is using this as a reference, I should add that it's not 100% identical. Octave doesn't support nested functions (it will interpret them as separate, but doesn't have any notion of closures, so if you reference a value in an outer scope it will fail). Also, at least one routine returns data in a slightly different format (listing files in a directory - the Octave approach is much simpler, and leads to cleaner code, but causes problems with inter-op). But moving a fairly large hacked-together (ie growing from exploratory data analysis) set of scripts from Matlab to Octave took less than an hour of testing and editing.
rick_2047 16y ago
I tried, no I really really tried hard (one hour of googleing is a long time in google time), but I can't. I have to use MatLab for control systems course I am taking. The problem is at college I submit my code as a matlab file and the control toolbox in octave is not syntax compatible with matlab control toolbox. So I guess octave lost to my university site licence.

I'm really wondering if any HN users actually use Octave in their daily lives?

by vtail 16y ago

I'm really wondering if any HN users actually use Octave in their daily lives?

Used it a lot as a replacement for matlab at the university. Nowadays, I just fire up ipython when I need some calculations. Then again my calculations now are nowhere near the complexity of what I did then. If I ever need to go back to the big matrices, I know where to find scipy/numpy.

Bud 16y ago

Yeah. Doesn't everyone just whip out their HP 41CX?

makmanalp 16y ago

In robotics Matlab is pretty commonly used as a data analytics tool, and this gives me pretty much all of the basic functionality that I'd need.

Anechoic 16y ago

Yep: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2112620 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2112620

nkassis 16y ago

Yes, I work as a dev in the Neuroimaging field and Matlab and Octave are pretty entrenched. While I don't really use it for new development, I often have to used tools that depend on matlab.

fluidcruft 16y ago
I so wish SPM ran on octave.... It's not there yet but we've fixed a lot of octave bugs by throwing parts of SPM at it.

andrewcooke 16y ago

I'm writing some GPU code that is called from Matlab. I don't have a Matlab licence, so I test everything using Octave (it has mex support). Works just fine. This is consultancy work in geophysics. I'm writing code for a colleague to use (he does have a Matlab licence) who is working with a mining company.

andrewcooke 16y ago
Actually, if anyone is using this as a reference, I should add that it's not 100% identical. Octave doesn't support nested functions (it will interpret them as separate, but doesn't have any notion of closures, so if you reference a value in an outer scope it will fail). Also, at least one routine returns data in a slightly different format (listing files in a directory - the Octave approach is much simpler, and leads to cleaner code, but causes problems with inter-op). But moving a fairly large hacked-together (ie growing from exploratory data analysis) set of scripts from Matlab to Octave took less than an hour of testing and editing.

rick_2047 16y ago

I tried, no I really really tried hard (one hour of googleing is a long time in google time), but I can't. I have to use MatLab for control systems course I am taking. The problem is at college I submit my code as a matlab file and the control toolbox in octave is not syntax compatible with matlab control toolbox. So I guess octave lost to my university site licence.