I went back to the beginning of the thread, to find out what I was actually talking about. I interpreted the question to mean using Python vs Matlab the way Matlab is commonly used by students. I now see that this is too restrictive, but still, I think it's representative of a large class of users. So what, exactly, is the question? What sort of user do we mean? Somebody who has used other "array environments" would have no difficulty switching to Python. Someone who is completely new to computer computation would seem to me to be unlikely to use any advanced features of the language. Matlab has some specialized (as in "expensive") toolboxes for special problems; do we mean these? I'm familiar with the controls toolbox, and by omission, with the optimization toolbox. Neither has anything that an undergraduate student would use that isn't also in SciPy. I don't know anything about any of the other toolboxes. As an aside, I use Python with Jedit. It serves as a perfectly usable combination, at least as convenient as Matlab with its built-in editor. (I've used Scite and PSPad, too, but I personally like Jedit better.) I've got it set up so that I save and hit F5 to run ... as in Matlab. john Travis Oliphant wrote:
Hi all,
I've started a possibly controversial but hopefully informative page that tries to list some of the advantages of using Python+NumPy+Scipy+Matplotlib+IPython (I'm calling that combination PyLab) versus other array environments.
The purpose is not to go into detail about semantic differences, but document higher-level differences that might help somebody decide whether or not they could use NumPy instead of some other environment. I've started with a comparison to MATLAB, based on an email response I sent to a friend earlier today.
Additions and corrections welcome.
-Travis O.
_______________________________________________ SciPy-user mailing list SciPy-user@scipy.org http://projects.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-user