[pavon]

I still prefer Matlab/Octave for numerical exploration, after initially being excited for Julia but later becoming disillusioned with it.

I’ve always found Matlab the language to be small and simple, with just a few oddities. The library is where most of the warts accumulated, but I’ve used it long enough to learn them. Performance is much better than python - very fast matrix operations and Java-like speeds for everything else, with comparable startup times.

[enriquto]

Octave is almost the perfect tool for numerical computing. Only problem is that loops are slow. Some millionaire out here should pay a "stallion" to write a good JIT octave interpreter and the world would be such a better place!

[martopix]

I always hear this "fast matrix operations" argument from Matlab users, but don't they both use BLAS? The difference can only be marginal