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There are a few other minor perks to using Octave: it recognises more syntax than Matlab, it allows you to define functions anywhere, not just in function files
by jordigh 11y ago
There are a few other minor perks to using Octave: it recognises more syntax than Matlab, it allows you to define functions anywhere, not just in function files, and slightly less insane semantics for some operations.
The biggest perk, however, is no license manager, and you can actually see all of the code, including the precise BLAS and LAPACK calls that we make. The backslash operator in Matlab is one of the juiciest secret sauces in mathematical computing.
- cozzyd 11y agoYes, I imagine the reason Matlab takes so long to start even with -nodesktop is the license manager. I mostly use Matlab/Octave as a glorified graphing calculator (anything complicated I do in ROOT) so the startup time really irks me. That said, I also of course appreciate that it's Free software. And now that I realize that you're a (the?) core dev, I should say thank you!
- jordigh 11y agoJust a core dev. I actually have not been writing a lot of Octave code recently, and have faded into a more "managerial" or "support" role, helping with the website, the code hosting, and so forth. Other people have done a lot more coding than I recently. Actually, most of my time has been spent talking to business people trying to grow our commercial support business so that Octave development can really take off.
- moonbug 11y agoNope. it's the JVM overhead. Try -nojvm.
- cozzyd 11y agoThanks, that brings it closer in startup time to Octave. However, it disables the ability to make plots, which is a quite severe limitation.