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Matlab seems like inertia/culture to me: it's the longtime de-facto standard in engineering. Since it's what everyone uses, it's got packages for everything, an
by mjn 14y ago
Matlab seems like inertia/culture to me: it's the longtime de-facto standard in engineering. Since it's what everyone uses, it's got packages for everything, and papers will often come with prototype Matlab implementations. Roughly like the cultural position R holds in statistics. Matlab's hold on engineering is also bolstered by its widespread use in industry: students want to learn it, because it's what their future employers use, and professors / research scientists like to use it because it's what their industrial collaborators use.
In my area of CS (artificial intelligence) it seems considerably less popular. I don't really remember how to use it, since the last time I used it seriously was in some engineering (but not CS) courses in undergrad.
- eru 14y agoIn addition, the MathWorks have so far managed not too screw up too badly and are keeping Matlab up to date. (They are definitely quite nice as an employer.)
- fixxer 14y agoI've heard this argument a lot (since 1999), but I'm not confident it holds true anymore. The free alternatives are so good. You may be right regarding Professors, but that is also changing as they age out.
- mjn 14y agoCould be; we don't use Matlab much in my own research area, so recent change could've happened under my radar. When I've occasionally had contact with engineers in industry, though, Matlab still seemed to be everywhere. The most recent two examples were someone doing DSP, and someone doing mechanical engineering, and both had all their stuff built on top of Matlab+Simulink.