And most engineers/scientists use it. If you know MATLAB, I don't see why you would even bother going to figure out the dozens of Python libraries available.
One major advantage python has over MATLAB that the author mentioned but didn't really emphasize is that python packages exist to interface with IRAF. Pretty much every astronomer who has to touch data uses IRAF to reduce the data and I can tell you from personal experience that IRAF is a horrible piece of software to work with directly. The python interface makes it much more tolerable, but I don't think there exists a comparable MATLAB version. Without a MATLAB interface to IRAF, python beats MATLAB for astronomical purposes hands down.
Not to mention the fact that the MATLAB language is extremely awkward anytime you want to work with something that isn't a matrix.
> MATLAB language is extremely awkward anytime you want to work with something that isn't a matrix.
From my limited experience, that's true but rarely of relevance. You can, and want to, use matrix operations all the way. Less bugs (simplier code), faster execution.
Is that infinite recursion or endless loop? Or is there an end to it, caused by quantum nature of work -- at some point the 90% becomes an undivisible unit? ;-)
((terribly sorry, couldn't help it))
At any rate, that sounds like you want to feed the input through a pipe of simple, programmable textual filters -- cue sed, awk etc. And then pipe into standard input of something -- I know Octave has standard input, MATLAB I wouldn't be so sure.
10 Reasons Python Rocks for Research (And a Few Reasons it Doesn’t) http://www.stat.washington.edu/~hoytak/blog/whypython.html
Should i switch to Python? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5063037/should-i-switch-t...
I've looked at a bunch of students' resumes lately - every single one listed Matlab as one of the languages they know. Not seeing a lot of Python in the resumes I'm reviewing, which are mostly EE students. I think Matlab is becoming the de-facto standard for numerical analysis and there are some nice toolboxes.
Coming from a traditional SW background I find some of the Matlab syntax alien but fundamentally it's a great product.
python
>>> 2 * 3.1 6.2000000000000002
perl -e "print 2 * 3.1" 6.2
ruby -e "print 2 * 3.1" 6.2
For example, in MATLAB, Octave and JavaScript, a value is displayed (formatted) as an `integer' if it's very close to an integer (closer than certain epsilon -- and that's configurable in case of M & O). At all the time, what the variable holds -- and what undergoes computations -- is a purely float value, never an integer.
>>> from decimal import Decimal
>>> 2 * Decimal("3.1")
Decimal('6.2')Anyway, it's not only engineers that use MATLAB. It is quite popular in the sciences, and not just for plotting.
Maybe this is all just a big anecdote, but I also work in scientific computing as well, and this has been my experience.