As an EE, I used Matlab a lot for signal processing (image and audio). I had Matlab for Windows at the time. In 2007, I decided to slowly migrate my primary des

As an EE, I used Matlab a lot for signal processing (image and audio). I had Matlab for Windows at the time. In 2007, I decided to slowly migrate my primary desktop environment over to Ubuntu, but I could not easily find (i.e., pirate) Matlab for Linux. Yes, I was aware of Octave and SciLab, but they are not enormously popular, particularly for niche fields that are comprehensively addressed by the Matlab toolboxes. That's when I discovered Python (NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, IPython). As for the actual learning process, these three things helped me the most: 1. http://www.pythonchallenge.com/ http://www.pythonchallenge.com/ 2. http://projecteuler.net/ http://projecteuler.net/ 3. the emergence of Stack Overflow. I asked and answered a bunch of questions there. I wrote more about my reasoning here in an old post (2010): http://stevetjoa.com/305/ http://stevetjoa.com/305/