I am currently sitting in NWC 1313 listening to the MathWorks speaker talk about Matlab. I can see why many folks like the software. I am still a bit skeptical about the black box functionality of the program. I know of the small group of students who program in Python and see why they prefer to program their own applications. I think it is the ability to control both the functionality and the output that is satisfying to the user that one does not have with a commercial product.

It is also fun to watch as folks bail from the seminar when the topic moved into developing the GUI. Matlab will allow for users to create a GUI for others to use based on the purpose and function of the code. But one can do the same with Python. So which is better? It comes down to the user and where they are most comfortable working. Myself, being an “old dog”, I like the command line and simple programing workflow of Python and the modules one can import to Python which has most of the tools that are an extra cost under Matlab.

mjl