GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime • Hacker News Board

Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#41

Post by _glass » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 10:16 AM UTC

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!

In Python you can use a library, then it is: x = np.linalg.solve(A, b). But yeah, Octave is nice, because it stays very symbolic.

Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#42

Post by duped » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 2:49 PM UTC

almostgotcaught wrote: post #27

duped wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

1000% yes, because this kind of stuff is not oneliners and you don't want to throw it away.

You also don't have the rats nest that is python environment and package management.

Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#43

Post by electroly » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

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!

In R, this is: x <- solve(A, b)

Re: GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

#44

Post by tomku » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 9:42 PM UTC

imploded_sub wrote: post #38

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…

I did that with Octave too. I didn't mind the language much, but it wasn't great. I had significant experience with both coding and simple models when doing it, so I wasn't a beginner; I can see it being an additional hurdle for some people. What are they using now? Python?

Believe Andrew Ng's new course is all Python now, yeah. Amusingly enough another class that I took (Linear Algebra: Foundations to Frontiers) kinda did the opposite move - when I took it, it was all Python, but shortly after they transitioned to full-powered MATLAB with limited student licenses. Guess it makes sense given that LAFF was primarily about the math.