Has anybody used both of these programs? How do they compare?
Is Octave a good substitute for Matlab?
How similar are the programing languages?
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Has anybody used both of these programs? How do they compare?
Is Octave a good substitute for Matlab?
How similar are the programing languages?
That would be me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Max2009
Matlab is proprietary software, GNU Octave is free software.Quote:
How do they compare?
Matlab has a more sophisticated GUI, and it executes nested loops
much faster than Octave.
It's the best free software for that kind of job I know.Quote:
Is Octave a good substitute for Matlab?
I rarely have to employ Matlab.
There are workarounds, for example, the slow loops can be replaced by precompiled modules written in C.
It's more a question of convenience -- as always :)
Very much. Octave has a few extensions, like you can write "a++" instead of writing "a = a+1". I usually have more work to port Octave -> Matlab than the other way around :) But it's not much work and often they run without changes.Quote:
How similar are the programing languages?
I know that Matlab is proprietary software and that Octave is free, that's why I'm interested.
I'm taking a course where we occasionally need to do assignments in Matlab.
I don't feel like shelling out money for a program I will only use for a single semester.
If I do my assignments in Octave and submit the octave code, will the checker be able to tell that I didn't use Matlab?
I know that at the end of the day the plotted graphs and output variables will be the same, but they insist that we submit our code too...
Well, in an ideal world you could go to your teacher and tell him/her that you don't want to be forced to use proprietary software just to do your coursework. In such a world, the answer you would get is "Oh, I didn't think of this. Yes, it is fine if you send me the solutions you worked out in Octave. After all, the course is about understanding the algorithms, not how to use a particular software."
But more likely the answer is that the learner/checker doesn't deem anything other than the solutions he prepared years ago as correct.
What I did when I attended such a course was to work out the solution in Octave and do the final testing for compatibility on the institute's computers, where Matlab was installed. So I could make sure I didn't oversee any compatibility issues. But there hardly where any.
Why oh why don't we live in an ideal world?
Very little compatibility issues you say? I'll try that.
Thanks.