So MATLAB users are moving away from the language (and toolkit?) in
favour of other tools <https://www.infoworld.com/article/4207496/matlab-programming-language-sinking-in-popularity.html>.

Yes, proprietary languages and toolkits are a lot less attractive
these days, given the embarrassment of riches available in the
open-source world. MATLAB was probably good enough at the time for its
original use (matrix manipulation), but take advice from someone who
had to do programming work in that language (for pay, yet): *stay well
away* from the GUI-toolkit API, if you can help it.

It was a long time ago, but I still get the shakes thinking about it
...

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-08-11, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

So MATLAB users are moving away from the language (and toolkit?) in
favour of other tools <https://www.infoworld.com/article/4207496/matlab-programming-language-sinking-in-popularity.html>.

Yes, proprietary languages and toolkits are a lot less attractive
these days, given the embarrassment of riches available in the
open-source world. MATLAB was probably good enough at the time for its original use (matrix manipulation), but take advice from someone who
had to do programming work in that language (for pay, yet): *stay well
away* from the GUI-toolkit API, if you can help it.

It was a long time ago, but I still get the shakes thinking about it
...

It's amazing Matlab as a tool remains(remained?) in use with such
popularity, given that the licensing system is a huge and major pain,
and singlehandedly becomes a giant "don't use this" sign. Maybe that was student licenses, but still...

(Although personally I'd probably be driven away by their choice to
feature only a ribbon bar.)

As for the language itself, wasn't there some similar one from the GNU
project, Octave? Or am I mixing things up?

--
Nuno Silva

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Yes, proprietary languages and toolkits are a lot less attractive
these days, given the embarrassment of riches available in the
open-source world. MATLAB was probably good enough at the time for its >original use (matrix manipulation), but take advice from someone who
had to do programming work in that language (for pay, yet): *stay well
away* from the GUI-toolkit API, if you can help it.

That's kind of the problem. We used to use a couple proprietary matrix manipulation packages, MatrixX (later XMath) and Control-C, and they were
fine, but when Matlab hit the ground around version 3.0 it was just so
much faster, so much easier, and so much cheaper that it pretty much took
over that whole market.

And Matlab got better and better and in version 4 they added some great graphics to it, and by Version 4.2C it was very zippy and very convenient.
And the support was great. You picked up the phone and you called Cleve
and he fixed whatever was broken.

And then.... they added stuff and stuff and more stuff and it turned into
the bloated monstrosity that it currently is. In an attempt to sell more copies, they made it do more things, and now it does so many things that
it doesn't do anything well. It costs a fortune now, and Cleve is sadly
no longer able to answer the phone from beyond the grave.

We still have one SunOS 4.1.4 machine running in order to run Matlab 4, although to be honest Octave was doing as good as job for a while. But now Octave is succumbing to the bloat....
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

I heard that MatrixX is good.

(S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!)

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Maybe Nuno Silva thought of SciLab or Octave.

(S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!)

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sun, 16 Aug 2026 18:03:42 -0000 (UTC), C¢il¡n Niocl s¡n Glost‚ir wrote:

On Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:37:38 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

Yes, proprietary languages and toolkits are a lot less attractive
these days, given the embarrassment of riches available in the
open-source world. MATLAB was probably good enough at the time for
its original use (matrix manipulation) ...

I heard that MatrixX is good.

I heard that Matplotlib <https://matplotlib.org/> was specifically
modelled on the charting capabilities of MATLAB. But that has Python underneath, which is a much more pleasant language to use than MATLAB
could offer.

Though, interestingly, it turns out that MathWorks now supports
packaging MATLAB code in a form accessible from Python <https://www.mathworks.com/help/compiler_sdk/ml_code/pythonpackagecompiler-app.html>.

So, you see, even the MATLAB people now realize they cannot escape the
creeping spread of Python ...

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

MATLAB does not warn if a coder accidentally uses a 2D array as a
parameter to a 1D function.
(S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!)

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)