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Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development
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Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development |
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Wed, 2 Jun 2010 15:48:37 +0000 (UTC) |
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> I am wondering, how do people feel about this at the moment? Playing
> the compatibility game does seem quite boring, but it's a very
> frequent request from Octave users. Furthermore, Octave has been
> listed in GNU's high priority project list[2] for some time as a
> replacement for Matlab.
I think Octave should continue to *strive* for compatibility overall, but with
exceptions. I also think we should ensure that Matlab code (at least the
tradition non-OOP core) should always run on Octave, but compatibility in the
other direction is not as important.
Why?
1. I actually think the core matlab language is the most elegant way of
expressing numerics out there today. I am not much of a fan of numpy or perl;
matlab code looks and feels FAR MORE like the corresponding mathematics
(including 1-indexing) -- this is a huge strength.
2. (VERY IMPORTANT) Part of the recent uptake (I think) in Octave has been
professors mentioning it as a cheap/ free alternative to a student license in
engineering courses. It should remain possible to teach Matlab programming
through Octave, at least in the near term.
Exceptions I would like to see:
1. Named parameters a la Python like "z = f(x=3, y=[1 2 3])"
2. A pointer/ reference notation for structs so that they can modified inline.
Otherwise I am fine with pass by value.
3. Some sort of coherent syntax for heterogeneous tables like datasets in SAS
or data.frames in SPLUS/R. (I wish I had a good idea what these might look
like).
4. Continued work on running octave scripts in an integrated Unix environment.
Other than that I am pretty happy with both Matlab and Octave. Note that I DONT
actually want an extensive OOP system in Octave; I think it adds more complexity
than its worth (but we all choose our poisons,...).
> Further down he laments:
>
> > Octave has never developed a strong core of dedicated and competent
> > developers.
>
> This certainly seems to have changed since 2001, hasn't it? I would
> have to generate a code swarm or look at it with gource, but at least
> in the old one from a couple of years ago[3], there does seem to be
> quite an explosion approximately in the middle the 2000's. I think
> there's even a greater speedup around the time when the sources moved
> to hg.
Indeed -- I think Octave turned a corner in the last few years. This is the
beauty of open source projects -- they never go away, and each incremental
improvement adds to the momentum. We may use it as a prototype language at work
for some simulations that will (supposedly) be done in "real" Matlab; we may
never need to use the "real" thing, if Octave development continues apace.
THanks to all!
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, (continued)
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, Sergei Steshenko, 2010/06/02
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, Judd Storrs, 2010/06/02
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, John Swensen, 2010/06/02
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, Jaroslav Hajek, 2010/06/02
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, Emmanuel FARHI, 2010/06/02
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, Judd Storrs, 2010/06/02
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, bpabbott, 2010/06/02
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, Søren Hauberg, 2010/06/02
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, Judd Storrs, 2010/06/02
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, Judd Storrs, 2010/06/02
Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development,
fork <=
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, CdeMills, 2010/06/04
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, Judd Storrs, 2010/06/04
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, John W. Eaton, 2010/06/04
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, Judd Storrs, 2010/06/04
- Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso, 2010/06/04
Re: Opinions on Matlab compatibility, Octave development, Alois Schlögl, 2010/06/07