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Agree completely -- MATLAB is slow to start and is a memory hog. The language itself is horrible (which is why I prefer to use another language for complex back
by ptero 6y ago
Agree completely -- MATLAB is slow to start and is a memory hog. The language itself is horrible (which is why I prefer to use another language for complex back-end computation). Libraries for reading and writing formatted data are a joke (try reading a large XML or JSON file; or even a large CSV file with a mix of numeric and string fields); etc., etc.
But it is just so good for visualization that I am willing to suffer its other problems. For example, try the below and zoom in / out / resize in both MATLAB and Octave:
n = 2000000; x = rand(1, n); y = rand(1, n); plot(x, y, '.')
- AlotOfReading 6y agoIf your primary concern is only the quality of visualizations and not language or libraries, I'm curious why you'd choose MATLAB over something like Mathematica. I've always found the latter to produce far prettier plots (with far less effort).
- ptero 6y agoI gave a more involved example in a sibling comment, but I need fast, interactive plotting for large datasets; not necessarily the prettiest. And as another user mentioned, MATLAB currently has a lock on fast scientific plotting. It really is in a league of its own for now.