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When I left university and did not have access to MATLAB anymore, I spent many a nights hacking away at GNU Octave. I have fond memories of Octave. I thought O

When I left university and did not have access to MATLAB anymore, I spent many a nights hacking away at GNU Octave. I have fond memories of Octave. I thought Octave will be a valuable skill when I enter the industry but I could not have been more wrong. Does anyone still use Octave? Is it worth learning? What tools or languages would you recommend as alternatives to someone graduating from university today?

zorked 6y ago
I've seen people use Octave in their workstations but I never worked where Octave code was used in "production". It was more of a individual prototyping/exploration tool for those who knew it.
- CarVac 6y ago
  I have Octave code running in production.
  - chriszhang 6y ago
    What does your Octave code do in production, if you don't mind me asking?
    - CarVac 6y ago
      It's a matching routine for picking closely matched pairs of sensors for differential measurement.
WJW 6y ago
AFAICT, Python and associated tooling (numpy, Pandas) are taking over many parts of industry where Matlab used to be king. For the rest, it really depends what you mean with "the industry". Different sectors have different languages.
tpoacher 6y ago
My biomedical engineering thesis was entirely coded on octave, and I still use it daily even though my current employment does not directly relate to it code-wise. Also, while perhaps this example is overplayed, Andrew Ng's hugely successful coursera nanodegree on Machine Learning is taught on octave. Andrew Ng explains the reasons for this beautifully in his course, and I agree. As for "I thought it would be a valuable skill; I could not have been more wrong", it depends. To remove the obvious comment, there is octave, matlab, and octave/matlab. Matlab is still 100% huge in the industry, and getting into this path through octave is at least equivalent, if not better (given you also have to learn more under-the-hood concepts than you might have to in matlab). However, I will assume here that you are referring specifically to the whole "investing in the octave ecosystem on top of already knowing the matlab language" issue. I would argue that octave tends to be more used in teaching and academia, so you're partly right. But at the same time, I would argue that as an open source project, the opportunities for participation and the transferable skills you can get from that are extremely relevant in any resume.
GavinAnderegg 6y ago
I can only speak from a data science perspective, but a lot of folks I know needed to move from MATLAB/SAS/SPSS to R (using RStudio) and Python (often with Jupyter Notebooks) once they got into the field. Might just be the circles I run in, though. I personally recommend Python (using NumPy, SciPy, MatPlotLib/Seaborn, Pandas, Keras/PyTorch, Gensim, etc). There’s a lot more that you’ll need to bolt together yourself, but there are packages for pretty much anything you’ll likely need to do in terms of math/science/analysis/ML. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t advocate for Octave, though! I haven’t used it other than to poke around, but it seems like a great package.
- galangalalgol 6y ago
  Do any of them use julia in jupyter? I like the syntax and speed much better than numpy. The ffi from numpy into its native implementation is a high overhead.
  - GavinAnderegg 6y ago
    None in my immediate group of friends, no. I honestly feel a bit behind the curve in terms of not knowing much about Julia these days. Maybe I’ll use it for Advent of Code this year!
a2tech 6y ago
I work with small engineering firms (antenna design and chip design). Most of them use Octave because MATLAB licenses are too expensive. Most of them are MATLAB users by training but are happy to use Octave to save the cash.
willis936 6y ago
I worked at a university lab throughout undergrad and grad. I wrote a lot of MATLAB. I graduated and got a job as an engineer at a lab in another university. I write a lot of MATLAB.
elevation 6y ago
> I thought Octave will be a valuable skill when I enter the industry but I could not have been more wrong. If your skill with Octave makes you more effective in a role, then it's still valuable even if your employer doesn't specifically require experience with it. I started using Octave after a coworker showed me how he used Matlab as a DSP prototype workbench. At the time I couldn't justify asking the boss for my own Matlab subscription, so I applied what I learned using Octave instead. At this point in my career, Matlab is available to me but Octave does what I need.

zorked 6y ago

I've seen people use Octave in their workstations but I never worked where Octave code was used in "production". It was more of a individual prototyping/exploration tool for those who knew it.

CarVac 6y ago
I have Octave code running in production.
- chriszhang 6y ago
  What does your Octave code do in production, if you don't mind me asking?
  - CarVac 6y ago
    It's a matching routine for picking closely matched pairs of sensors for differential measurement.

WJW 6y ago

AFAICT, Python and associated tooling (numpy, Pandas) are taking over many parts of industry where Matlab used to be king. For the rest, it really depends what you mean with "the industry". Different sectors have different languages.

tpoacher 6y ago

My biomedical engineering thesis was entirely coded on octave, and I still use it daily even though my current employment does not directly relate to it code-wise. Also, while perhaps this example is overplayed, Andrew Ng's hugely successful coursera nanodegree on Machine Learning is taught on octave. Andrew Ng explains the reasons for this beautifully in his course, and I agree. As for "I thought it would be a valuable skill; I could not have been more wrong", it depends. To remove the obvious comment, there is octave, matlab, and octave/matlab. Matlab is still 100% huge in the industry, and getting into this path through octave is at least equivalent, if not better (given you also have to learn more under-the-hood concepts than you might have to in matlab). However, I will assume here that you are referring specifically to the whole "investing in the octave ecosystem on top of already knowing the matlab language" issue. I would argue that octave tends to be more used in teaching and academia, so you're partly right. But at the same time, I would argue that as an open source project, the opportunities for participation and the transferable skills you can get from that are extremely relevant in any resume.

GavinAnderegg 6y ago

I can only speak from a data science perspective, but a lot of folks I know needed to move from MATLAB/SAS/SPSS to R (using RStudio) and Python (often with Jupyter Notebooks) once they got into the field. Might just be the circles I run in, though. I personally recommend Python (using NumPy, SciPy, MatPlotLib/Seaborn, Pandas, Keras/PyTorch, Gensim, etc). There’s a lot more that you’ll need to bolt together yourself, but there are packages for pretty much anything you’ll likely need to do in terms of math/science/analysis/ML. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t advocate for Octave, though! I haven’t used it other than to poke around, but it seems like a great package.

galangalalgol 6y ago
Do any of them use julia in jupyter? I like the syntax and speed much better than numpy. The ffi from numpy into its native implementation is a high overhead.
- GavinAnderegg 6y ago
  None in my immediate group of friends, no. I honestly feel a bit behind the curve in terms of not knowing much about Julia these days. Maybe I’ll use it for Advent of Code this year!

a2tech 6y ago

I work with small engineering firms (antenna design and chip design). Most of them use Octave because MATLAB licenses are too expensive. Most of them are MATLAB users by training but are happy to use Octave to save the cash.

willis936 6y ago

I worked at a university lab throughout undergrad and grad. I wrote a lot of MATLAB. I graduated and got a job as an engineer at a lab in another university. I write a lot of MATLAB.

elevation 6y ago

> I thought Octave will be a valuable skill when I enter the industry but I could not have been more wrong. If your skill with Octave makes you more effective in a role, then it's still valuable even if your employer doesn't specifically require experience with it. I started using Octave after a coworker showed me how he used Matlab as a DSP prototype workbench. At the time I couldn't justify asking the boss for my own Matlab subscription, so I applied what I learned using Octave instead. At this point in my career, Matlab is available to me but Octave does what I need.