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Comment by zmk5 | Hacker News Reader

None of them use Python either. A lot just use MATLAB.

> None of them [academics] use Python either.

Here’s a paper by Travis Oliphant describing SciPy that has >2500 citations. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=pyt...

In many fields of science Python is already the dominant language, in others (like neuroscience), the writing is on the wall for Matlab. Approximately all the momentum, new packages, and new student training in systems neuroscience that I’ve seen in the last 5 years is in Python.

I apologize :-/ I should have been more clear. What I was referring to was in a little more broader context than just Data Science or ML. Many of the Engineering and Math PhDs I work with typically use MATLAB or Mathematica.

It really depends heavily on the engineering field. I do work in optical/physical engineering (photonics, nonlinear optics, quantum computing) and essentially operations research (optimization theory) and almost everything we use is Python (as a C + CUDA wrapper/HDL-type thing) and Julia (which I'm trying to introduce for code reusability, even if it is only marginally slower than the former).

At least in my university, most people really do use Python + C and Julia for many, many cases and MATLAB and such are used mostly in mechanical and civil engineering, some aero-astro (though a ton of people still use Python and C for embedded controllers), and Geophysics/Geophysical engineering (but, thanks to ML, people are switching over to Python as well).

I think even these fields are slowly switching to open versions of computing languages, I will say :)

Yeah I know what you mean. I'm mechanical engineering (Controls) and the vast majority of them still use MATLAB, but they are slowly moving towards more open computing languages. I can only consider this a great thing! :)

The issue I see is with the undergraduate curriculum in many Universities. This is where I see the legacy use of MATLAB is really hurting the future generation of students. Many still don't know proper programming fundamentals because MATLAB really isn't set up to be a good starting point for programming in general. To me, MATLAB is a great tool IF you know how to program already.

Oh yeah, it’s a killer I’m not going to lie. I have the same problem with some classes here (though I haven’t taken one in years) and it’s quite frustrating since students are forced to pay for mediocre software in order to essentially do what a normal calculator can do anyways (at least at the undergrad level).

I work in a massive research institution with a lot of medical doctors. They almost all use R if they can program. I try to encourage the use of Python to help them slowly pick up better programming fundamentals so they dont miss out on whatever the next wave is in a decade. Learning R doesn't teach you much about other languages but IMO learning Python can help you move languages.

> Many of the Engineering and Math PhDs I work with typically use MATLAB or Mathematica.

Yes, and the government still needs COBOL programmers.

Going forward, I believe Python has far more momentum than either MATLAB or Mathematica. I think far more MATLAB and Mathematica users will learn Python than the other way around in the future, and far more new scientific programmers will learn Python than either of those.

I really believe so too! I just hope that goes downstream to the undergrads in the fields too.

MATLAB's foothold in academia is due to legacy familiarity, cheap (but not free) academic licensing, a nice IDE, and good toolboxes for certain niches (Simulink, Control Toolbox). I used MATLAB for 12 years in academia and would consider myself an advanced user.

However, when I left academia (engineering) 8 years ago, its use was already declining in graduate level research, and right before I left most professors had already switched their undergrad instructional materials to using Python and Scilab. I observed this happening at many other institutions as well. Anecdotally, this trend started maybe 10 years ago in North America, and is happening at various rates around the world.

I'm in industry now and MATLAB usage has declined precipitously due to exorbitant licensing costs and just a poor fit for productionization in a modern software stack. Most have switched to Python or some other language. My perception is that MATLAB has become something of a niche language outside of academia -- it's akin to what SPSS/Minitab are in statistics.

I'm not denying any of this and agree with your analysis about MATLABs use. I'm just saying that it's still used a lot more than people on Hacker News like to think.

The University I work at still teaches MATLAB to new engineering students still.

Oh I understand, I was more responding to your original statement "None of them use Python either. A lot just use MATLAB" which would be an unusual state of affairs in this day and age, though I have no doubt it is true in your specific situation. It's just that your experience seems circumscribed and uncommon in academia today (well insofar as I can tell -- I don't know the culture at every university).

...nobody in academia uses python? I would strongly disagree. The whole point of this Swift library is to provide an alternative to PyTorch which is clearly very popular in the community.

Being in academia myself, I have to disagree as well. Academia has it's own languages and tools it prefers. They have just recently started warming up to Python.

MATLAB is used by a lot of engineers, Mathematica is used by mathematicians/physics theorists, Python is used widely by a lot of different fields.

MATLAB and Mathematica are the primary tools I see used by people at my uni. People are just starting to warm up to Python.

In bioinformatics / computational biology, Python is absolutely ubiquitous.

Same for any other field that uses ML extensively.

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