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That's not true, in my experience. This tool reminds me of MathCAD, which is both moderately popular and proprietary. The most popular numerical computing envi

That's not true, in my experience. This tool reminds me of MathCAD, which is both moderately popular and proprietary. The most popular numerical computing environment for engineering is MATLAB, which is proprietary.

R0b0t1 5y ago
The state of the art is done in other languages now, specifically Python with numpy and extensions, R, or Julia. There was a time for proprietary systems like this but I think it has passed.
- sidpatil 5y ago
  Sure, in the fields of computer science, data science, etc. However, this is not the case in more traditional engineering fields (electrical, mechanical, etc.) which tend to teach MATLAB throughout undergraduate education and subsequently rely on it throughout graduate education, research, and industry. MATLAB has some significant benefits over the FOSS alternatives, such as its first-party commercially-supported extensions/libraries (known as "Toolboxes"), and commercial support for the core product itself.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    Yes and no. I work at an engineering/R&D firm. It's a mix. If you check research in those areas it tends to, at least by my estimation, newer software packages typically based on Python or C++. I'm aware there are existing tools that see heavy use but that does not make them state of the art or cutting edge, merely sufficient. And yes, that can be enough. But for new work? Why throw in behind these guys?
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    I took civil engineering. Our introductory computer science course was in javascript, but course work later was in Fortran (which I didn't mind) and then python. There was also some matlab for labs but the programming was mostly fortran. One of my professors was doing some research in spring and dampener systems and the models were all in fortran as well.
  - analog31 5y ago
    I suspect Matlab will have a long tail in engineering education, for a number of reasons: 1) It's effectively free for educational use thanks to generous site licenses. 2) A lot of curricula have been developed around it. 3) Indisputably, it works. But outside of academia, let's face it, the most widespread "engineering IDE" is Excel. Relatively few engineers continue to use math and equations after they graduate. A lot of their calculations can be done in Excel, or within their CAD software. The biggest threat to Matlab is the automation of engineering calculations. As a result, it's more mixed, with the people who are actually doing quantitative work coming from a variety of fields including math and physics, but also from areas that have no prior loyalty to Matlab such as biology and statistics. For instance in my department, any deeply quantitative work is done by a very small handful of "math people" who may or may not have "engineer" job titles, but whose degrees are in math or the physical sciences.
    - chris_wot 5y ago
      Dear God I hope engineers doing anything safety related aren’t using Excel!
      - krapht 5y ago
        Why?
        chris_wot 5y ago
        Because it’s not accurate. So far as I’m aware, even today it’s statistical functions still have flaws. Don’t use Excel.
      - rurban 5y ago
        I once sold a program for large network optimization problem in Excel. The calculations of the sewer planning for an entire district, a few million homes in northern Italy. Excel was the best for the job, integrated into a CAD package. Safety? Wrong planning could lead to some problems as seenm in poorly planned cities (e.g. Houston), but I guess they are largely ignorable. "Common Mistakes in Planning of Sewer Networks and STPs" https://www.springerprofessional.de/common-mistakes-in-planning-of-sewer-networks-and-stps/15259600 https://www.springerprofessional.de/common-mistakes-in-plann... My district was properly planned, Excel was the best. Would not recommend doing something similar by hand.
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    Many universities are moving to Python for their engineering education. I believe there are two reasons: 1. the popularity of Python for ML in particular, many students want to learn general skills that are relevant beyond a narrow "engineering domain". 2. Somewhat surprisingly a push from industry, where licences make up a significant chunk of the budget. I know several R&D engineers who switched over to Python, because they got annoyed that licences where not available when they wanted to work. This has changed the overall perception of Python in these companies (who previously regarded Python as a "hobby" project). Regarding the toolboxes, in my experience quite a few are of extremely poor quality despite significant costs. To give you one example, the instrumentation toolbox is so buggy, that we essentially have to open and close instruments every time we want to send commands (otherwise we would get random freezes which often could only be fixed with a complete computer restart). This adds significant time, when we moved from matlab to python for our instrument control measurement time for a single measurement (of which we would often need >100 in one experiment) went from >5min to less than 30s.
- anon_tor_12345 5y ago
  >There was a time for proprietary systems like this but I think it has passed. spoken, truly, like someone that has never worked in a [^software] engineering firm. civil/electrical/chemical engineering firms all uniformly rely on matlab, comsol, solidworks, autocad, etc.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Actually I'm interested in any tool that saves me from writing code. I much prefer working at the symbolic level because as soon as I open a regular IDE I start thinking about my programming language instead of the problem I'm working on. I don't program full time any more so it's not a subconscious process, and really I would like the computer to do the work of translating my symbolic concept into syntactically correct language. If it works well, I don't really care that it's proprietary.
forgotpwd16 5y ago
Note that Mathcad and MATLAB have existed for more than 30 years. Legacy plays an important role to their popularity.

R0b0t1 5y ago

The state of the art is done in other languages now, specifically Python with numpy and extensions, R, or Julia. There was a time for proprietary systems like this but I think it has passed.

sidpatil 5y ago
Sure, in the fields of computer science, data science, etc. However, this is not the case in more traditional engineering fields (electrical, mechanical, etc.) which tend to teach MATLAB throughout undergraduate education and subsequently rely on it throughout graduate education, research, and industry. MATLAB has some significant benefits over the FOSS alternatives, such as its first-party commercially-supported extensions/libraries (known as "Toolboxes"), and commercial support for the core product itself.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  Yes and no. I work at an engineering/R&D firm. It's a mix. If you check research in those areas it tends to, at least by my estimation, newer software packages typically based on Python or C++. I'm aware there are existing tools that see heavy use but that does not make them state of the art or cutting edge, merely sufficient. And yes, that can be enough. But for new work? Why throw in behind these guys?
- LegitShady 5y ago
  I took civil engineering. Our introductory computer science course was in javascript, but course work later was in Fortran (which I didn't mind) and then python. There was also some matlab for labs but the programming was mostly fortran. One of my professors was doing some research in spring and dampener systems and the models were all in fortran as well.
- analog31 5y ago
  I suspect Matlab will have a long tail in engineering education, for a number of reasons: 1) It's effectively free for educational use thanks to generous site licenses. 2) A lot of curricula have been developed around it. 3) Indisputably, it works. But outside of academia, let's face it, the most widespread "engineering IDE" is Excel. Relatively few engineers continue to use math and equations after they graduate. A lot of their calculations can be done in Excel, or within their CAD software. The biggest threat to Matlab is the automation of engineering calculations. As a result, it's more mixed, with the people who are actually doing quantitative work coming from a variety of fields including math and physics, but also from areas that have no prior loyalty to Matlab such as biology and statistics. For instance in my department, any deeply quantitative work is done by a very small handful of "math people" who may or may not have "engineer" job titles, but whose degrees are in math or the physical sciences.
  - chris_wot 5y ago
    Dear God I hope engineers doing anything safety related aren’t using Excel!
    - krapht 5y ago
      Why?
      - chris_wot 5y ago
        Because it’s not accurate. So far as I’m aware, even today it’s statistical functions still have flaws. Don’t use Excel.
    - rurban 5y ago
      I once sold a program for large network optimization problem in Excel. The calculations of the sewer planning for an entire district, a few million homes in northern Italy. Excel was the best for the job, integrated into a CAD package. Safety? Wrong planning could lead to some problems as seenm in poorly planned cities (e.g. Houston), but I guess they are largely ignorable. "Common Mistakes in Planning of Sewer Networks and STPs" https://www.springerprofessional.de/common-mistakes-in-planning-of-sewer-networks-and-stps/15259600 https://www.springerprofessional.de/common-mistakes-in-plann... My district was properly planned, Excel was the best. Would not recommend doing something similar by hand.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  Many universities are moving to Python for their engineering education. I believe there are two reasons: 1. the popularity of Python for ML in particular, many students want to learn general skills that are relevant beyond a narrow "engineering domain". 2. Somewhat surprisingly a push from industry, where licences make up a significant chunk of the budget. I know several R&D engineers who switched over to Python, because they got annoyed that licences where not available when they wanted to work. This has changed the overall perception of Python in these companies (who previously regarded Python as a "hobby" project). Regarding the toolboxes, in my experience quite a few are of extremely poor quality despite significant costs. To give you one example, the instrumentation toolbox is so buggy, that we essentially have to open and close instruments every time we want to send commands (otherwise we would get random freezes which often could only be fixed with a complete computer restart). This adds significant time, when we moved from matlab to python for our instrument control measurement time for a single measurement (of which we would often need >100 in one experiment) went from >5min to less than 30s.
anon_tor_12345 5y ago
>There was a time for proprietary systems like this but I think it has passed. spoken, truly, like someone that has never worked in a [^software] engineering firm. civil/electrical/chemical engineering firms all uniformly rely on matlab, comsol, solidworks, autocad, etc.
anigbrowl 5y ago
Actually I'm interested in any tool that saves me from writing code. I much prefer working at the symbolic level because as soon as I open a regular IDE I start thinking about my programming language instead of the problem I'm working on. I don't program full time any more so it's not a subconscious process, and really I would like the computer to do the work of translating my symbolic concept into syntactically correct language. If it works well, I don't really care that it's proprietary.

forgotpwd16 5y ago

Note that Mathcad and MATLAB have existed for more than 30 years. Legacy plays an important role to their popularity.