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GNU Octave 6.1.0

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Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#3

Post by chriszhang »

When I left university and did not have access to MATLAB anymore, I spent many a nights hacking away at GNU Octave. I have fond memories of Octave.

I thought Octave will be a valuable skill when I enter the industry but I could not have been more wrong. Does anyone still use Octave? Is it worth learning?

What tools or languages would you recommend as alternatives to someone graduating from university today?

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#4

Post by wallwart »

I've always preferred MATLAB to Python as the more engineer-friendly programming language. The interface was a plus as well. That being said, given the sheer amount of scientific libraries for Python and universities moving towards it as well, I'm wondering if the effort to maintain Octave is worth it.

One use for it could definitely be running older MATLAB scripts that have deprecated language features. Those were a real pain to make work again.

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#5

Post by tpoacher »

wallwart wrote: post #4

I've always preferred MATLAB to Python as the more engineer-friendly programming language. The interface was a plus as well. That being said, given the sheer amount of scientific libraries for Python and universities moving towards it as well, I'm wondering if the effort to maintain Octave is worth it. One use for it could definitely be running older MATLAB scripts that have deprecated language features. Those were a…

In my opinion it is absolutely 100% worth "developing" Octave (the word 'maintain' makes it sound like it's an otherwise static project).

The improvements from 3 to 4 were massive. The improvements from 4 to 5 equally so. I can't wait to try 6.

In any case, it is definitely not just a tool for running 'old matlab scripts'. It is a beautiful language and environment in its own right, and if academia manages to wake up at some point they would invest in it for the open source environment that it is, in a way similar to python, and help it get even more amazing.

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#6

Post by oytis »

tutfbhuf wrote: post #2

Ask HN: Can GNU Octave be used as full MATLAB replacement?

For me Simulink has always been the biggest missing part. Also RTL (or other code, e.g. for DSP chips) synthesis for Octave is pretty non-existent AFAIK.

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#7

Post by zorked »

chriszhang wrote: post #3

When I left university and did not have access to MATLAB anymore, I spent many a nights hacking away at GNU Octave. I have fond memories of Octave. I thought Octave will be a valuable skill when I enter the industry but I could not have been more wrong. Does anyone still use Octave? Is it worth learning? What tools or languages would you recommend as alternatives to someone graduating from university today?

I've seen people use Octave in their workstations but I never worked where Octave code was used in "production". It was more of a individual prototyping/exploration tool for those who knew it.

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#8

Post by WJW »

chriszhang wrote: post #3

When I left university and did not have access to MATLAB anymore, I spent many a nights hacking away at GNU Octave. I have fond memories of Octave. I thought Octave will be a valuable skill when I enter the industry but I could not have been more wrong. Does anyone still use Octave? Is it worth learning? What tools or languages would you recommend as alternatives to someone graduating from university today?

AFAICT, Python and associated tooling (numpy, Pandas) are taking over many parts of industry where Matlab used to be king. For the rest, it really depends what you mean with "the industry". Different sectors have different languages.

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#9

Post by tpoacher »

chriszhang wrote: post #3

When I left university and did not have access to MATLAB anymore, I spent many a nights hacking away at GNU Octave. I have fond memories of Octave. I thought Octave will be a valuable skill when I enter the industry but I could not have been more wrong. Does anyone still use Octave? Is it worth learning? What tools or languages would you recommend as alternatives to someone graduating from university today?

My biomedical engineering thesis was entirely coded on octave, and I still use it daily even though my current employment does not directly relate to it code-wise.

Also, while perhaps this example is overplayed, Andrew Ng's hugely successful coursera nanodegree on Machine Learning is taught on octave. Andrew Ng explains the reasons for this beautifully in his course, and I agree.

As for "I thought it would be a valuable skill; I could not have been more wrong", it depends. To remove the obvious comment, there is octave, matlab, and octave/matlab. Matlab is still 100% huge in the industry, and getting into this path through octave is at least equivalent, if not better (given you also have to learn more under-the-hood concepts than you might have to in matlab).

However, I will assume here that you are referring specifically to the whole "investing in the octave ecosystem on top of already knowing the matlab language" issue. I would argue that octave tends to be more used in teaching and academia, so you're partly right. But at the same time, I would argue that as an open source project, the opportunities for participation and the transferable skills you can get from that are extremely relevant in any resume.

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#10

Post by tpoacher »

oytis wrote: post #6
tutfbhuf wrote: post #2

Ask HN: Can GNU Octave be used as full MATLAB replacement?

For me Simulink has always been the biggest missing part. Also RTL (or other code, e.g. for DSP chips) synthesis for Octave is pretty non-existent AFAIK.

I know that they have an XCos interface, but I've never used it (or Simulink for that matter).
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