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This point struck home with his mention of education: how frustrating it is that so much of it lives in, say, Matlab, as compared to any other numerical package
by ISL 13y ago
This point struck home with his mention of education: how frustrating it is that so much of it lives in, say, Matlab, as compared to any other numerical package!
Check out GNU Octave:
www.octave.org
It's not Matlab (particularly toolboxes), but for day-to-day work, it's fine, and it will run a lot of *.m files. All of my thesis data analysis is done in Octave. I could choose Matlab (we have a site license), but I want anyone in the world to be able to check my work exactly.
- roel_v 13y ago"but I want anyone in the world to be able to check my work exactly." The problem is not that they can't, the problem is they don't want to. Solve the real problems first before worrying about imaginary ones. (this is one of the main flaws in most of GNU rhetoric, btw, and I say this as someone who 10 years ago made the 'access to source code is a moral right' argument and actually believed it).
- guard-of-terra 13y agoOnce you solved "real problems" you made a lot of choices you're going to regret. But it's too late. We have enough solutions for real problems but few good ones. Good enough is not good enough. Time to think up front.
- ISL 13y agoI've no illusion that most people will never be interested in my source. For the 2-10 people that are, being able to duplicate my working environment may be of great use.