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  • I Blame Python

    From Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=@ldo@nz.invalid to comp.misc on Tue Aug 11 01:37:38 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    So MATLAB users are moving away from the language (and toolkit?) in
    favour of other tools <https://www.infoworld.com/article/4207496/matlab-programming-language-sinking-in-popularity.html>.

    Yes, proprietary languages and toolkits are a lot less attractive
    these days, given the embarrassment of riches available in the
    open-source world. MATLAB was probably good enough at the time for its
    original use (matrix manipulation), but take advice from someone who
    had to do programming work in that language (for pay, yet): *stay well
    away* from the GUI-toolkit API, if you can help it.

    It was a long time ago, but I still get the shakes thinking about it
    ...
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  • From Nuno Silva@nunojsilva@invalid.invalid to comp.misc on Tue Aug 11 08:26:52 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On 2026-08-11, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

    So MATLAB users are moving away from the language (and toolkit?) in
    favour of other tools <https://www.infoworld.com/article/4207496/matlab-programming-language-sinking-in-popularity.html>.

    Yes, proprietary languages and toolkits are a lot less attractive
    these days, given the embarrassment of riches available in the
    open-source world. MATLAB was probably good enough at the time for its original use (matrix manipulation), but take advice from someone who
    had to do programming work in that language (for pay, yet): *stay well
    away* from the GUI-toolkit API, if you can help it.

    It was a long time ago, but I still get the shakes thinking about it
    ...

    It's amazing Matlab as a tool remains(remained?) in use with such
    popularity, given that the licensing system is a huge and major pain,
    and singlehandedly becomes a giant "don't use this" sign. Maybe that was student licenses, but still...

    (Although personally I'd probably be driven away by their choice to
    feature only a ribbon bar.)

    As for the language itself, wasn't there some similar one from the GNU
    project, Octave? Or am I mixing things up?
    --
    Nuno Silva
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  • From kludge@kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) to comp.misc on Tue Aug 11 20:11:05 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
    Yes, proprietary languages and toolkits are a lot less attractive
    these days, given the embarrassment of riches available in the
    open-source world. MATLAB was probably good enough at the time for its >original use (matrix manipulation), but take advice from someone who
    had to do programming work in that language (for pay, yet): *stay well
    away* from the GUI-toolkit API, if you can help it.

    That's kind of the problem. We used to use a couple proprietary matrix manipulation packages, MatrixX (later XMath) and Control-C, and they were
    fine, but when Matlab hit the ground around version 3.0 it was just so
    much faster, so much easier, and so much cheaper that it pretty much took
    over that whole market.

    And Matlab got better and better and in version 4 they added some great graphics to it, and by Version 4.2C it was very zippy and very convenient.
    And the support was great. You picked up the phone and you called Cleve
    and he fixed whatever was broken.

    And then.... they added stuff and stuff and more stuff and it turned into
    the bloated monstrosity that it currently is. In an attempt to sell more copies, they made it do more things, and now it does so many things that
    it doesn't do anything well. It costs a fortune now, and Cleve is sadly
    no longer able to answer the phone from beyond the grave.

    We still have one SunOS 4.1.4 machine running in order to run Matlab 4, although to be honest Octave was doing as good as job for a while. But now Octave is succumbing to the bloat....
    --scott
    --
    "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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  • From =?UTF-8?B?Q8OzaWzDrW4=?= =?UTF-8?B?IE5pb2Nsw6Fzw61u?= =?UTF-8?B?IEdsb3N0w6lpcg==?=@thanks-to@Taf.com to comp.misc on Sun Aug 16 18:03:42 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    I heard that MatrixX is good.

    (S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!)
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  • From =?UTF-8?B?Q8OzaWzDrW4=?= =?UTF-8?B?IE5pb2Nsw6Fzw61u?= =?UTF-8?B?IEdsb3N0w6lpcg==?=@thanks-to@Taf.com to comp.misc on Sun Aug 16 18:05:34 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    Maybe Nuno Silva thought of SciLab or Octave.

    (S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!)
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  • From Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=@ldo@nz.invalid to comp.misc on Sun Aug 16 22:23:47 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On Sun, 16 Aug 2026 18:03:42 -0000 (UTC), C||il|!n Niocl|is|!n Glost|-ir wrote:

    On Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:37:38 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

    Yes, proprietary languages and toolkits are a lot less attractive
    these days, given the embarrassment of riches available in the
    open-source world. MATLAB was probably good enough at the time for
    its original use (matrix manipulation) ...

    I heard that MatrixX is good.

    I heard that Matplotlib <https://matplotlib.org/> was specifically
    modelled on the charting capabilities of MATLAB. But that has Python underneath, which is a much more pleasant language to use than MATLAB
    could offer.

    Though, interestingly, it turns out that MathWorks now supports
    packaging MATLAB code in a form accessible from Python <https://www.mathworks.com/help/compiler_sdk/ml_code/pythonpackagecompiler-app.html>.

    So, you see, even the MATLAB people now realize they cannot escape the
    creeping spread of Python ...
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