On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 1:56 PM, Luke <hazelnu...@gmail.com> wrote: > This was pretty much my experience as well. I was introduced to > Python in a graduate course and made the migration from Matlab over to > Python over the course of a couple of years. In engineering there are > few people using open source tools, I think mostly because people get > used to doing things a certain way and don't want to change, and the > vast majority of the software taught in engineering curriculum is > proprietary. This makes it really hard to use open source tools and > collaborate with other people in engineering because they often simply > aren't willing to invest the time in learning new tools. In some > cases, there isn't a viable open source tool to do the job, but often > this isn't the case. Companies like Mathworks have gotten into bed > with engineering departments and designed the course curriculum to be > centered around tools like Matlab, so the level of entrenchment is > quite deep.
There are two reasons I see Matlab used a lot in engineering departments. The first is that it's used a lot in industry. The second is that it has quite a bit of functionality that's not available in open source programs. The collection of toolboxes means it can do a whole lot more. I'm still looking for an equivalent to the System Identification toolbox. Parts of the functionality are in an Octave add-on, but it doesn't look like anybody has bothered to implement ETFE (empirical transfer-function estimate). Without that, I can't switch since I use that function as part of some modal analysis code. Similarly, there are a lot of toolboxes for control and the support for taking a model and outputting embedded code to run on various hardware platforms. That's a step up from just outputting C based upon a set of equations. I would quite like to completely switch away from Maple and Matlab, but I can't. I've been trying the easier one first, Maple. One problem is I already have a lot of Maple code I've written to support my work so I need to convert that over to Sympy before I could do real work. I don't have that time, so I've been sticking with Maple for the most part, while trying to learn Sympy better. To switch from Matlab to Scipy, I'd have to recreate the Splines Toolbox and parts of the System ID toolbox (my two main Matlab toolboxes). The Splines Toolbox could be handled mostly by wrapping the appropriate parts of the SLATEC library from Netlib, but the System ID toolbox is much more work. Cheers, Tim. -- Tim Lahey PhD Candidate, Systems Design Engineering University of Waterloo http://about.me/tjlahey -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group. To post to this group, send email to sympy@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sympy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sympy?hl=en.
