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Matplotlib combines the ease of use of MATLAB with the engineering precision of ... MATLAB. At least the programmers won't feel like tearing their hair out at t

Matplotlib combines the ease of use of MATLAB with the engineering precision of ... MATLAB. At least the programmers won't feel like tearing their hair out at the lunacy of MATLAB. The only improvement could be to export the generated figures into excel so that we can make minor touchups manually.

version_five 4y ago
> minor touchups manually That's what I liked so much about matlab. You could generate figures programmatically and set the fonts and lines styles and whatnot, and then could just nudge stuff around in the figure if it wasn't how you wanted (plus retrieve that info).
- ok123456 4y ago
  The figure editor is the only real thing I miss from matlab. That and the ability to rotate the axes of plots interactively. The rest of the language and the platform though? Awful.
  - version_five 4y ago
    I mostly used matlab for fourier transforming data and plotting it, with some occasional image processing thrown in and a few "simulations" in the sense of calculating some function at a bunch of points. For all of that, I thought it was great. I saw people getting into make real applications, using the gui functionality and whatnot, it never felt like the right tool for something like that.
    - ok123456 4y ago
      Outside of the core language of a glue for a bunch of numerical routines and stuff to plot them, it's a Frankenstein's monster. You never know if the script you send someone will work right, because everyone has different toolbox options, and everything is in the global namespace. It has some OOP features bolted on to it, but it always looked worse than Perl5. The core language is straight out of the mid-80s. The only real upgrade it got was it can finally broadcast matrix dimensions. Before that, you had people trying to 'vectorize' their code with 'repmat'. Despite all of its shortcomings, especially with packaging, I'll take scientific python over that any day.
bee_rider 4y ago
Output an eps, then you can correct any issues manually in a text editor.
plus 4y ago
In the past, I've saved Matplotlib figures to .svg so I could touch them up in Inkscape. Not the most ergonomic process, but when push comes to shove it is workable.
helmholtz 4y ago
Bah. Each time this comes up, people are quick to bash on Matlab. I won't stand for it. Matlab is not many things. It is certainly not all things to all men. But it is Fucking. Productive. for the kinds of quick numerical analyses that engineers often have to do. There is a function for everything and the kitchen sink, the syntax is simple as hell, there is a real IDE, and it gets out of your way. I've tried all the rest. I've tried Julia. The tooling, my god, it is woeful. The famous Time To First Plot. I've tried Python. Doesn't hold a candle to Matlab for the ease with which you can manipulate matrices and vectors. Matlab is far from perfect, but fuck it, it's an amazing tool for being productive.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  Oh I agree, I only complain because I use it. By the way it's not Matlab but MATLAB. The name presumably comes from the Hindi exclamation for when you don't understand something.
  - helmholtz 4y ago
    Hahaha. I'm Indian, so that joke is familiar :) They should have just stuck a question mark at the end of it to represent all the leet programmers who couldn't fathom how a language could possibly dare to be 1-indexed.
leni536 4y ago
output in svg, touch up in inkscape

version_five 4y ago

> minor touchups manually That's what I liked so much about matlab. You could generate figures programmatically and set the fonts and lines styles and whatnot, and then could just nudge stuff around in the figure if it wasn't how you wanted (plus retrieve that info).

ok123456 4y ago
The figure editor is the only real thing I miss from matlab. That and the ability to rotate the axes of plots interactively. The rest of the language and the platform though? Awful.
- version_five 4y ago
  I mostly used matlab for fourier transforming data and plotting it, with some occasional image processing thrown in and a few "simulations" in the sense of calculating some function at a bunch of points. For all of that, I thought it was great. I saw people getting into make real applications, using the gui functionality and whatnot, it never felt like the right tool for something like that.
  - ok123456 4y ago
    Outside of the core language of a glue for a bunch of numerical routines and stuff to plot them, it's a Frankenstein's monster. You never know if the script you send someone will work right, because everyone has different toolbox options, and everything is in the global namespace. It has some OOP features bolted on to it, but it always looked worse than Perl5. The core language is straight out of the mid-80s. The only real upgrade it got was it can finally broadcast matrix dimensions. Before that, you had people trying to 'vectorize' their code with 'repmat'. Despite all of its shortcomings, especially with packaging, I'll take scientific python over that any day.

bee_rider 4y ago

Output an eps, then you can correct any issues manually in a text editor.

plus 4y ago

In the past, I've saved Matplotlib figures to .svg so I could touch them up in Inkscape. Not the most ergonomic process, but when push comes to shove it is workable.

helmholtz 4y ago

Bah. Each time this comes up, people are quick to bash on Matlab. I won't stand for it. Matlab is not many things. It is certainly not all things to all men. But it is Fucking. Productive. for the kinds of quick numerical analyses that engineers often have to do. There is a function for everything and the kitchen sink, the syntax is simple as hell, there is a real IDE, and it gets out of your way. I've tried all the rest. I've tried Julia. The tooling, my god, it is woeful. The famous Time To First Plot. I've tried Python. Doesn't hold a candle to Matlab for the ease with which you can manipulate matrices and vectors. Matlab is far from perfect, but fuck it, it's an amazing tool for being productive.

cuteboy19 4y ago
Oh I agree, I only complain because I use it. By the way it's not Matlab but MATLAB. The name presumably comes from the Hindi exclamation for when you don't understand something.
- helmholtz 4y ago
  Hahaha. I'm Indian, so that joke is familiar :) They should have just stuck a question mark at the end of it to represent all the leet programmers who couldn't fathom how a language could possibly dare to be 1-indexed.

leni536 4y ago

output in svg, touch up in inkscape