First Mover Advantage. Matlab has been around since the late s. Python came along more recently, and the libraries that make it suitable for Matlab type tasks came along even more recently. People are used to Matlab, so they use it. Matlab is good at doing number crunching.
Also Matrix and matrix manipulation. It has many helpful built in libraries depends on the what version I think it is easier to use than python if you are going to be calculating equations. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow.
Learn more. Why is it so used by universities? When is it better than Python? Asked 13 years, 1 month ago. Active 9 years ago. Viewed k times. Peter Mortensen 29k 21 21 gold badges 97 97 silver badges bronze badges. Andrea Ambu Andrea Ambu Matlab was used in my Numerical Analysis course.
Polynomial interpolation and least squares were a couple of the topics covered in that course if you want examples of what is in such a course. Maple in contrast was for Symbolic Computation and was a bit different as in that class we tried to maintain precision by allowing square roots and other constants, such as pi or e, to remain in an answer. Symbolic computation is one of the features that make matlab interesting to work with, apart from the numerous libraries.
I also used it for numerical analysis, and in signal processing modeling with simulink. Maybe there's no point on using it for whatever you're learning to use it for, but it's a remarkable tool for the academic and researching world, this "fantasy realm" where good ideas and inventions and future technologies used in the "real" world come from, you know?
Active Oldest Votes. Eric O Lebigot That's actually not true. The JIT helps, it's much better than nothing, but you still have to structure your code the right way. Vectorized code can be many orders of magnitude faster than naive matlab code.
JIT might get you a factor of 2 or 5 back, in my experience. Vectorization is not as important as it once was. It still may help in some situations, but is no longer soemthing that you have to do. FYI: Vectorization is the idea of operating on a matrix or vector of data rather than a single scalar in a loop through the vector. MatlabDoug: Oh I agree it's not as important as it once was, but it's still an issue, and sometimes a huge issue.
And none of that speaks to the other design quirks of matlab as a general programming language although I'll note that as of a the object model is nicer — simon. Vectorization is still very important. With the advent of SSE and wider registers it is needed to squeeze perf out of the processor.
I can't comment on Matlab in general but to say vectorizing is not important is just wrong, especially in high scale software that is latency sensitive. I totally disagree that JIT makes vectorized code useless. We use Matlab a lot to run experiments which take several weeks or months. Imagine if the program runs half as fast without vectorization we would need f. Show 4 more comments. Most of answers do not get the point. So let's see how matlab can help.
And they are very easy to find by using the help. They are very helpful. PS: Finally, what I hate with matlab: its price. Oli Oli Great answer! I think there is one another aspect worth mentioning - a great documentation, unlike python or MSDN.
Your concise sample code reminds me of people praising Perl for processing strings: It's unreadable. I prefer to code functions around operations I need to do often, and reuse those functions. As a bonus, this lets other programmers use my functions because the code is actually readable. Add a comment. Here are some things that I prefer about Matlab: consistency: MathWorks has spent a lot of effort making the toolboxes look and work like each other.
They haven't done a perfect job, but it's one of the best I've seen for a codebase that's decades old. It's often most frustrating when I see things that appear to mimic Matlab, but don't quite work the same. Mr Fooz Mr Fooz The documentation of Matlab is really exceptional. Nothing I've seen compares to it. Totally agree with this comment. The syntax is clunky but the documentation makes everything so simple. Lance Roberts Lance Roberts What do you mean for "You don't have to worry about the IDE as much as in more formal packages"?
I think I did not understand. You don't have to deal with linking, building, compiling etc for the most part. I haven't played with Python yet, but I'm sure it's slightly more complicated than running the first matlab program. The way it works at EE at my university, is that professors have the students use matlab to graph certain things. Then since they already have acquaintance with it, it's easier for them to step up to programming it. You don't have to deal with linking, building or compiling in Python either.
In that respect Python and Matlab are the same. Show 2 more comments. Turker Turker 5 5 silver badges 6 6 bronze badges. Community Bot 1 1 1 silver badge. Scottie T Scottie T Adam Bellaire Adam Bellaire k 19 19 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Aaron Maenpaa Aaron Maenpaa k 10 10 gold badges 92 92 silver badges bronze badges. Matlab's documentation is much much better than Python's. Matlab also comes with zillions of built-in functions that I have yet to see with Numpy or Pylab.
Matlab has thousands of build-in functions but it also costs thousands of dollars. No-one in the company knew Python although many of us wanted to use it. MatLab has a name, a company, and task force behind it to solve any problems. There were some but not a lot of legacy MatLab projects that would need to be re-written. Toolboxes are designed to work together, and they integrate with parallel computing environments, GPUs, and C code generation. We need to filter our data, look at poles and zeroes, run nonlinear optimizations, and perform numerous other tasks.
MATLAB apps are interactive applications that combine direct access to large collections of algorithms with immediate visual feedback. You can instantly see how different algorithms work with your data. Major engineering and scientific challenges require broad coordination across teams to take ideas to implementation.
Every handoff along the way adds errors and delays. You can run your algorithms in parallel by simply changing for-loops into parallel for-loops or by changing standard arrays into GPU arrays. Run parallel algorithms in an infinitely scalable cloud with no code changes. Engineers and scientists trust MATLAB to send a spacecraft to Pluto, match transplant patients with organ donors, or just compile a report for management. This trust is built on impeccable numerics stemming from the strong roots of MATLAB in the numerical analysis research community.
Select a Web Site. Of course we also use plenty of other tools and programming languages: there is no "one tool" that all industries use, and particular fields of engineering and companies can use quite different tools, but MATLAB is certainly one of them!
Accepted Answer. Jason Ross on 17 Apr Vote 3. My undergraduate degree is in Mech E. Out of college, I started out in the MCAD world working on mechanical design software and then I gradually just moved into working on software all the time. As an engineer you are going to be faced with new tools and techniques constantly as the technology and science advances. MATLAB is very popular in science and engineering fields, so it is highly likely that you'll be using MATLAB, Simulink or other toolboxes as your studies continue, and it's likely to find it at use in industry -- although it is entirely possible that you will choose a career path or maybe the career path chooses you!
More Answers 7. Cedric Wannaz on 17 Apr Vote 5. Edited: Cedric Wannaz on 17 Apr Here is another point to think about: as an engineer, it is likely that you will have to implement pragmatic approaches for solving problems, which, in a world with limited resources in particular time and money , means minimizing the "time to solution".
The reason is that the time to solution is not only the computation time but the computation time plus the development time plus test, maintenance, etc , and in practice the development time is quite often significantly greater than the computation time. For this reason, using a consistent framework of intermediary complexity for the user , which offers a large set of stable tools with fairly good efficiency in terms of computation time and the possibility to include parts written in e.
Walter Roberson on 17 Apr Image Analyst on 17 Apr Vote 4. It's used by a lot of people in industry, not just students. Net Programming for a few things that could benefit from a slick, fancy user interface. So there's a good chance you will continue to use it once you get a real engineering job. Man, In what country Matlab is used in industry? The US? In mine you got almost zero job offers that requires Matlab. Walter Roberson on 4 Sep I am in central Canada. Image Analyst on 4 Sep Adam on 4 Sep I've been working with Matlab for 12 years in a private company in the UK though when I have looked around I certainly don't see all that many jobs advertised for Matlab I haven't searched all that often though.
Andreas Goser on 17 Apr I like addind Simulink or actuall "model based design" to your professor's suggestion. The value here depends on the industry and application. Certainly there are also departments that have use of engineer skills that do not work with more than office software. Jan on 17 Apr Vote 2. When you are a student today, you will need to use computers very likely for over 45 years.
While there are a lot of important applications for Matlab today, there will be substantial changes over the decades. But with ability to use a computer language fluently will be a base for your work constantly.
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