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0 pointsgeofft5y ago0 comments

I mean, huge chunks of the scientific community run on MATLAB or Fortran. (Also... are you actually managing to get new students to install Python 2 on their laptops, somehow? And no enterprising undergrad is just like "I will just make this work on Python 3 because that's easier"?)

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3 comments · 2 top-level

joshuamorton5y ago· 1 in thread

Ehh, I absolutely did that. Heck, for a class I reverse engineered a robot's bluetooth control api because coding up computer vision was easier in python than in matlab (which had a provided "SDK" that some TA had written in years prior).

I spent less time doing that issue than it took to debug a missing comma on the end of a line in some matlab code (for a different assignment in a later class) that led to some incorrect matrix operation and completely failing code. I do not like matlab.

willis9365y ago

I think it’s a matter of experience. I’ve used MATLAB for nearly a decade and can whip up optimized bit banging, data acquisition, and signal processing code in a matter of minutes. When I try the same in python I spend days trying to figure out what the “right” solution to something is, try 3-4 options, find the issues with each, and by that point I’m burnt out and tell myself it isn’t worth it to try to replace MATLAB.

cozzyd5y ago

and MATLAB and Fortran are fully supported, so I'm not sure what the problem is?

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