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GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

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Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#21

Post by mark_l_watson »

airza wrote: post #18
tomku wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in one of those early cohorts that used Octave, one of the things the course had to deal with was that at the time (I don't know about now) Octave did not ship with an optimization function suitable for the coursework so we ended up using an implementation of `fmincg` provided along with the homework by the course staff. If you're following along with the lectures, you might need to track down that file, it's p…

It’s nice to know that someone else suffered this pain. And that i bet on PGMs which really turned out to be the wrong horse…

ha! I took at least one PGM class myself. I had a difficult time with the material.

Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#22

Post by mark_l_watson »

trungld wrote: post #13
yupyupyups wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python on Web Assembly has to be really slow.

It’s slower than native, sure — but for education, it’s a game changer. Students can open a notebook in any browser, on any device (even a Chromebook or iPad), and start coding instantly — no installs, no setup issues. Perfect for workshops, classrooms, or sharing interactive tutorials. It runs real Python, so you can teach core concepts, plotting, and even simple data analysis right in the browser. For heavier compu…

Thank you. I just tried it on my iPad, very cool.

Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#23

Post by yupyupyups »

bee_rider wrote: post #19
yupyupyups wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python on Web Assembly has to be really slow.

Hmm. Do we expect X on Y to have run times more like X*Y or max(X,Y)? Or maybe some more complicated combination because you have to pay both their overheads but then once things start cranking you are just paying the per-element cost of one of the languages…

I'm not an expert. I speculate that the compiler is unlikely to optimize the wasm binary better than an x86 binary. Furthermore, every VM instruction is on average going to need more than 1 cpu instructions to be executed. Intuitively, that would suggest slower execution. That is also what we see happen in practice with VMs.

Python is not a particularly fast language in the first place due to bad utilization of memory, hash table lookups everywhere and a high function call overhead.

Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#24

Post by duped »

bee_rider wrote: post #9
wiz21c wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"near clone" is a bit exaggerated. As much as I'm a free software zealot, I don't think Octave comes close to matlab yet (provided you do anything a bit more advanced than the practical of some courses) See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12084246/differences-bet...

I don’t think Matlab or Octave are great languages for software engineering. Actually, these languages are like example #1 of the difference between engineering software vs software engineering: they are excellent tools for writing, like, 10-100 line numerical experiments. Anyone who runs up against a limitation of Octave has probably hit the point where they should consider switching, but not to Matlab or some other…

I haven't found a better CLI calculator utility for writing more than one-liner numerical stuff with some plots than MATLAB and octave. They're fantastic.

Python is trash, by comparison.

Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#25

Post by jhbadger »

znpy wrote: post #8
kjgkjhfkjf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early versions of Andrew Ng's ML MOOC used Octave, if you are looking for examples and exercises. YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiPvV5TNogxIS4bHQVW4p...

Oh, the times when Coursera and Udacity were just starting... They were supposed to disrupt academia, it's a shame they never actually did.

There's a great recent book (Anne Trumbore's _The Teacher_in_The_Machine_) on using technology to "disrupt" education (starting much earlier than you would think, with mechanical devices in the early 20th century that could drill students with multiple choice questions, running through basically pre-computer MOOCS that used radio and then TV to broadcast lectures, various educational software, and finally MOOCs like Coursera and Udacity).

Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#26

Post by enriquto »

ok123456 wrote: post #17
wiz21c wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"near clone" is a bit exaggerated. As much as I'm a free software zealot, I don't think Octave comes close to matlab yet (provided you do anything a bit more advanced than the practical of some courses) See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12084246/differences-bet...

People who use MATLAB use it for the toolboxes. The language itself is awful.

> The language itself is awful.

As a programming language freak, I must disagree... in what other programming language can you solve a linear system Ax=b in one line

    x = A\b
without any external libraries or imports, just with the base language?

I never used any official matlab "toolbox", but still love the language via the octave interpreter. It's so clean and straightforward!

Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#27

Post by almostgotcaught »

duped wrote: post #24
bee_rider wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think Matlab or Octave are great languages for software engineering. Actually, these languages are like example #1 of the difference between engineering software vs software engineering: they are excellent tools for writing, like, 10-100 line numerical experiments. Anyone who runs up against a limitation of Octave has probably hit the point where they should consider switching, but not to Matlab or some other…

I haven't found a better CLI calculator utility for writing more than one-liner numerical stuff with some plots than MATLAB and octave. They're fantastic. Python is trash, by comparison.

You think MATLAB is better than (checks notes) a scripting language for writing one liners/throwaway code? Is that what you're saying here? Lol

Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#28

Post by almostgotcaught »

enriquto wrote: post #26
ok123456 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who use MATLAB use it for the toolboxes. The language itself is awful.

> The language itself is awful. As a programming language freak, I must disagree... in what other programming language can you solve a linear system Ax=b in one line x = A\b without any external libraries or imports, just with the base language? I never used any official matlab "toolbox", but still love the language via the octave interpreter. It's so clean and straightforward!

> without any external libraries or imports

Why does this matter in the least? Like you must understand that this is a library call right? Like just put `import numpy as np` in your PYTHONSTARTUP and it's the exact same UX in python.

https://docs.python.org/3/using/cmdline.html#envvar-PYTHONST...

Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#29

Post by username223 »

ok123456 wrote: post #17
wiz21c wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"near clone" is a bit exaggerated. As much as I'm a free software zealot, I don't think Octave comes close to matlab yet (provided you do anything a bit more advanced than the practical of some courses) See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12084246/differences-bet...

People who use MATLAB use it for the toolboxes. The language itself is awful.

Matlab/Octave is great for numerical programs that perform within an order of magnitude of Fortran. If some things aren't fast enough, you can rewrite them in C or Fortran without too much trouble. If you're doing anything other than numerical computing, it's awful, and you should use a different language.

(Source: I did a PhD using a mixture of Octave for numerical stuff, Perl for text-processing and automation, and C++ for the parts that were too slow. Choose the right tool for the job.)

Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#30

Post by lispisok »

znpy wrote: post #8
kjgkjhfkjf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early versions of Andrew Ng's ML MOOC used Octave, if you are looking for examples and exercises. YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiPvV5TNogxIS4bHQVW4p...

Oh, the times when Coursera and Udacity were just starting... They were supposed to disrupt academia, it's a shame they never actually did.

The real value of a degree unfortunately isnt the education it's the exclusivity of the program. When bootcamps realized this some started having more stringent admissions.
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