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Comment by domenukk | Hacker News Reader

Octave user under 30 here. I picked up a Matlab project recently (pattern recognition, electrical engineering etc. heavily use it in my university). Because I wanted to run it on Amazon and didn't want to deal with all the licensing issues I ported it to Octave instead. Works like a charm (using it in https://camfinger.com ) and it's actually free like any normal interpreter would be.

Personally I'm more used to other languages and would also tend to python, however I must admit Matlab/Octave is a pretty good way to develop matrix heavy stuff thanks to an extremely good REPL/debugger. That being said, Octave feels pretty slow for loops (lack of a proper jit), so I wouldn't know if I'd really use Octave over Matlab if it were not for licensing issues either. Then again I can rent a lot of cloud time for a Matlab license...

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>>> and it's actually free like any normal interpreter would be

You are under 30. ;-)

No kidding; I remember the first time I found a C compiler for under $100; I felt like I hit the jackpot.

One of my first C compilers was only free without floating point support.

I guess it was crippleware...

And now javascript is free without int support!

cripplefreeware

Turbo Pascal first or early version was for $50 I think. And many other compilers were ~$500 around the same period.

Price point was important, you could get Cobol and Fortran for $30.

https://books.google.com/books?id=_i8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA38&lpg=P...

Turbo Pascal really set the standard for IDEs that would run on consumer machines (as opposed to workstations). The compilation times were near zero, even on my 12.5MHz AT. Switching to Turbo C++ was a huge step backwards in that regard (AMD 40MHz 386DX, hit compile, go play Frisbee for 15 minutes).

Yes, Turbo Pascal was blindingly fast - I could type almost as fast as I could think :) (I mean, even though incrementally compiling my code every few lines) - equivalent or better than a scripting language - at least for small to medium-sized programs. Fantastic for exploratory programming and learning and correcting as you go, though also for bigger, less exploratory stuff. I don't think I've met its match to this day. I read that the Borland developers who created it wrote it in tuned assembly language.

Turbo Pascal was the best, for that time. Unfortunately it didn't really set the standard, as no IDE I've used afterwards has ever been of comparable speed, without any lag anywhere ;)

Exactly what I said in my sibling comment :)

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