4 ms·

Are you planning on getting work done? Or are you looking forward to digging into the source of yet another GNU tool that is stuck 20 years in the past? "One o

by tacos 12y ago

Are you planning on getting work done? Or are you looking forward to digging into the source of yet another GNU tool that is stuck 20 years in the past? "One of the biggest new features for the Octave 3.8.x release series is a graphical user interface. It is the one thing that users have requested most often over the last few years and now it is almost ready." If you're planning on spending more than a few hours in the tool, consider spending the $200 on the one that's from this century. I picked up Matlab late and wish I'd done so sooner. It's a REPL for higher-level thinking and quick experimentation. It makes some hard things very very simple and some simple things very hard. They've dropped the price and fixed a lot of shit in the last 5 years. It's replaced a lot of goofing around in Python and Excel for me. Edit: I have a love/hate relationship with R and more of a love relationship with Python but they don't do ANYTHING like what Matlab does.

GordyMD 12y ago
Isn't Octave built with Matlab compatibility in mind? And Octave 3.8.0 was released back in December 2013 - so the GUI is already present, and from this decade. It's a great open source alternative to Matlab in my eyes for anyone that does not want to stump up $200. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MATLAB_Programming/Differences_between_Octave_and_MATLAB http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MATLAB_Programming/Differences_...
- tacos 12y ago
  Since you linked to several thousand words explaining the differences between the languages, as well as the following quote: "The plan is for the GUI to be considered stable with version 4.0" then I'll assume you haven't used either product. I assure you that I did not spend $4k just to insult the open source community. Love open source, glad they're doing it, much love to the devs -- and life is just too fucking short. If you're broke or screwing around--ok, maybe. If you're sitting in it more than an hour a week, maybe Photoshop is worth the $10/month vs GIMP, dig? And if you're in school and get it for free or are interested in getting up to speed with the state of the art in machine learning and qualify for the personal license at under 200 bucks? I can't think of a better tool.
  - GordyMD 12y ago
    Several thousand? Evidently you like to exaggerate. The content is circa 1000 words - but the point it makes in relation to this context is delivered in the first sentence. I've used both before. Matlab in my CompSci BS and MS and Octave in my professional career. I'm just making the point that your critique of Octave seems a little harsh, and to the Leyman skews the reality - that Octave is an open source alternative. Yes, a little rough around the edges if you intend to use the visual aspects of the tool, but for matrix multiplication etc it has its use cases.
    - tacos 12y ago
      The page you link is actually a shortened form and links to the real list: http://wiki.octave.org/FAQ#How_is_Octave_different_from_Matlab.3F http://wiki.octave.org/FAQ#How_is_Octave_different_from_Matl... which comes in at 2,662 words. The parts you say are good about Octave are EXACTLY the stuff I use Python and R for. If you want to use a Matlab library or toolkit, maybe cut in paste some code from a paper, do a quick 'what if' thing -- Octave just doesn't cut it. (My point in speaking up here isn't to diss Octave it's to re-center the reality around Matlab.)
  - profinger 12y ago
    For the record, Photoshop > (GIMP)x10000 IMHO. (Just finally glad I found someone that may agree) I've not used Matlab but I've used Octave (during the ml class from Andrew Ng) and it wasn't too awful. Occasionally very frustrating though so if Matlab solves those frustrations I could see it being worth it if you're going to spend time in it!
  - profinger 12y ago
    For the record, Photoshop > (GIMP)x10000 IMHO. I've not used Matlab but I've used Octave (during the ml class from Andrew Ng) and it wasn't too awful. Occasionally very frustrating though so if Matlab solves those frustrations I could see it being worth it if you're going to spend time in it!

by tacos 12y ago

GordyMD 12y ago

Isn't Octave built with Matlab compatibility in mind? And Octave 3.8.0 was released back in December 2013 - so the GUI is already present, and from this decade. It's a great open source alternative to Matlab in my eyes for anyone that does not want to stump up $200. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MATLAB_Programming/Differences_between_Octave_and_MATLAB http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MATLAB_Programming/Differences_...

tacos 12y ago
Since you linked to several thousand words explaining the differences between the languages, as well as the following quote: "The plan is for the GUI to be considered stable with version 4.0" then I'll assume you haven't used either product. I assure you that I did not spend $4k just to insult the open source community. Love open source, glad they're doing it, much love to the devs -- and life is just too fucking short. If you're broke or screwing around--ok, maybe. If you're sitting in it more than an hour a week, maybe Photoshop is worth the $10/month vs GIMP, dig? And if you're in school and get it for free or are interested in getting up to speed with the state of the art in machine learning and qualify for the personal license at under 200 bucks? I can't think of a better tool.
- GordyMD 12y ago
  Several thousand? Evidently you like to exaggerate. The content is circa 1000 words - but the point it makes in relation to this context is delivered in the first sentence. I've used both before. Matlab in my CompSci BS and MS and Octave in my professional career. I'm just making the point that your critique of Octave seems a little harsh, and to the Leyman skews the reality - that Octave is an open source alternative. Yes, a little rough around the edges if you intend to use the visual aspects of the tool, but for matrix multiplication etc it has its use cases.
  - tacos 12y ago
    The page you link is actually a shortened form and links to the real list: http://wiki.octave.org/FAQ#How_is_Octave_different_from_Matlab.3F http://wiki.octave.org/FAQ#How_is_Octave_different_from_Matl... which comes in at 2,662 words. The parts you say are good about Octave are EXACTLY the stuff I use Python and R for. If you want to use a Matlab library or toolkit, maybe cut in paste some code from a paper, do a quick 'what if' thing -- Octave just doesn't cut it. (My point in speaking up here isn't to diss Octave it's to re-center the reality around Matlab.)
- profinger 12y ago
  For the record, Photoshop > (GIMP)x10000 IMHO. (Just finally glad I found someone that may agree) I've not used Matlab but I've used Octave (during the ml class from Andrew Ng) and it wasn't too awful. Occasionally very frustrating though so if Matlab solves those frustrations I could see it being worth it if you're going to spend time in it!
- profinger 12y ago
  For the record, Photoshop > (GIMP)x10000 IMHO. I've not used Matlab but I've used Octave (during the ml class from Andrew Ng) and it wasn't too awful. Occasionally very frustrating though so if Matlab solves those frustrations I could see it being worth it if you're going to spend time in it!