python for a matlab user

[Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven]

Hi David,

-On [20080202 17:51], David Wang (climater at gmail.com) wrote:
>i use matlab in my daily research and some shell scripting as well
>(primarily for data analysis). i wonder how easy or difficult for a
>matlab user to pick up python? i also know Fortran but haven't used it
>for years.

Having recently done a bunch of Fortran to Matlab and Fortran to Python
conversions I hope I am able to pinpoint some things:

- Python has no built-in IDE of the magnitude of Matlab
- using the command line interpreter you can easily run pieces of code and
  check the details on the various variables and such you declared, so
  they're reasonably similar in this aspect
- structuring of the code is pretty much similar as well, the only thing you
  need to look at is the way the declaration part of loops are written
- Python is indentation-sensitive, whereas Matlab isn't
- Python starts indexing at 0, not 1 like Matlab does

-- 
Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven <asmodai(-at-)in-nomine.org> / asmodai
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