On 25/04/07, Sturla Molden <sturla@molden.no> wrote:

> You have to realize that Matlab is mainly used by people who are not
> skilled programmers but scientists and engineers, the majority of which
> have never used anything else except perhaps Fortran 77. An array is the
> most advanced data structure they will ever need. I should know, I was
> among them for several years. Then I did something as silly as teaching
> myself C++. God knows why.

I have a quibble with this. I work with scientists too, and while an
array is usually the most sophisticated data structure they ever use,
it's not the most sophisticated data structure they ever *need*. Many
many times I've seen a project that is more limited, more error-prone,
slower, and more painful to use because the programmer didn't know
about or didn't use the right programming tools. Or was using a
language that didn't make them readily available.