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GNU Octave 6.1.0

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Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#31

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Zhyl wrote: post #25
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #14

I know it's not really the point here, but it's nice to see a GNU project with a decent home-page. It's clear, presentable, and modern. (And of course it's not a JavaScript horror-show, but we'd never see that from a GNU project.)

You say that, but I feel like it's a bit of a case of 'dress for the job you want'. Having a modern-ish looking site just gives off some signals like 'this is maintained', 'this has been deemed to still have utility in 2020' and 'the developer has some awareness of current UX'. It doesn't need to be flashy. Just a nice font, a header, centre justification, some spacing, a paragraph explaining what the thing is, a nic…

GNU Lightning has a rather spartan website like you describe: https://www.gnu.org/software/lightning/

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#32

Post by Stubb »

3dsynd wrote: post #18

What value can Octave give me, relative to python?

A horror show mentally reconciling its one-based indexing with the zero-based indexing you're used to in Python.

The use of a zero is admittedly a relatively new concept, and it may not catch on.

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#33

Post by monsieurbanana »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #14

I know it's not really the point here, but it's nice to see a GNU project with a decent home-page. It's clear, presentable, and modern. (And of course it's not a JavaScript horror-show, but we'd never see that from a GNU project.)

How about emacs homepage? It's been redesigned recently if I remember correctly.

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#35

Post by MaxBarraclough »

monsieurbanana wrote: post #33
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #14

I know it's not really the point here, but it's nice to see a GNU project with a decent home-page. It's clear, presentable, and modern. (And of course it's not a JavaScript horror-show, but we'd never see that from a GNU project.)

How about emacs homepage? It's been redesigned recently if I remember correctly. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

Nice. My one complaint is that the text contrast seems a little lower than it could be. The text should be a true (0,0,0) black.

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#37

Post by Zhyl »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #31
Zhyl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that, but I feel like it's a bit of a case of 'dress for the job you want'. Having a modern-ish looking site just gives off some signals like 'this is maintained', 'this has been deemed to still have utility in 2020' and 'the developer has some awareness of current UX'. It doesn't need to be flashy. Just a nice font, a header, centre justification, some spacing, a paragraph explaining what the thing is, a nic…

GNU Lightning has a rather spartan website like you describe: https://www.gnu.org/software/lightning/

That's pretty good! I think the only change I would make would be to swap out the serif font for a sans-serif font and that would be my ideal.

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#38

Post by buescher »

3dsynd wrote: post #18

What value can Octave give me, relative to python?

A REPL-oriented IDE with integrated debugger and convenient matrix inspection/editing tools.

Relatively terse syntax for array/matrix operations.

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#39

Post by ptero »

I wish Octave the best of luck, but it faces an uphill battle against MATLAB (established engineering projects) and Python (new starts).

The biggest issue with Octave for me is the slowness of its plotting compared to MATLAB. A major use case for me is visualizing large data sets. I can generate data using any backend (Python, C++, MATLAB, etc.) and want the ability to plot it, zoom in/out to a rectangle, filter to a subset / go back to the full dataset. Simple 2D plotting, no 3D or hard rendering stuff.

In such plotting I find Octave (and to a lesser degree Python's matplotlib) super slow compared to MATLAB. To see it, make a scatterplot of 1-5 million points (say, with x and y random, uniformly distributed in [0, 1]). Zoom to a portion a couple of times. MATLAB response is instant, Octave takes seconds. Do the same for 20 million points (which is still a very small dataset by today's standards) and forget about interactive plotting with Octave :(.

As I said, I still wish Octave the best and hope it succeeds, but with my student days behind me I prefer to just buy an individual license of MATLAB every 5 years or so for my hobby projects.

Re: GNU Octave 6.1.0

#40

Post by bachmeier »

A general note that applies to some comments in this discussion, but to any discussion of Matlab on HN. Yes, Matlab is still used heavily, even for new code, and it will continue to be used for many years into the future. It doesn't really add much to the conversation to generalize from the small sample that is your slice of one industry/your employer/your inner circle of friends to conclude that Matlab is dead. According to Wikipedia[1], Mathworks had revenue of more than $1 billion in 2019.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathWorks

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