MATLAB vs. Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
MATLAB
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
MatLab is a predictive analytics and computing platform based on a proprietary programming language. MatLab is used across industry and academia.
$49
per student license
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft offers Visual Studio Code, a text editor that supports code editing, debugging, IntelliSense syntax highlighting, and other features.
$0
Pricing
MATLABMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Editions & Modules
Student
$49
per student license
Home
$149
perpetual license
Education
$250
per year
Education
$500
perpetual license
Standard
$860
per year
Standard
2,150
perpetual license
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MATLABMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
MATLABMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Considered Both Products
MATLAB
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code is more lightweight than most other options, such as Spyder and MATLAB. These other applications provide strong benefits such as a useful user interface that displays information about variables in in your workspace, as well as a window for built-in …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
MATLABMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Small Businesses
IBM SPSS Statistics
IBM SPSS Statistics
Score 8.4 out of 10
BBEdit
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Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Alteryx Platform
Alteryx Platform
Score 9.0 out of 10
Vim
Vim
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Alteryx Platform
Alteryx Platform
Score 9.0 out of 10
Vim
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Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
MATLABMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(53 ratings)
8.7
(91 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(2 ratings)
Usability
9.9
(4 ratings)
9.0
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
9.5
(7 ratings)
9.7
(23 ratings)
User Testimonials
MATLABMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Likelihood to Recommend
MathWorks
MATLAB really does best for solving computational problems in math and engineering. Especially when you have to use a lot of functions in your solving process, or if you have a nonlinear equation that must be iteratively solved. [MATLAB] can also perform things like integration and derivation on your equations that you put into it.
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Microsoft
Microsoft Visual Studio Code is highly recommended for the development of systems and / or complex applications entrusted to work teams under a specific methodology, and its use is also recommended for the maintenance of previously developed applications.
It is not recommended as a learning environment for developers with little experience as the learning curve would be too high
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Pros
MathWorks
  • It has a very user friendly library which helps users learn this software fairly quickly in a short span of time.
  • The graphical user interface provided by the software is really good.
  • The code that a person writes allows options for debugging.
  • One can visualize the flow of control of their code inside MATLAB.
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Microsoft
  • Very accessible -- it's compatible with all platforms and environments, free to install, and fast to open
  • Strong native support for many languages, and very strong extensibility to provide advanced language features
  • Git integration is top-notch, often displaying a better history, diff, and merge interface that is otherwise available in version control systems
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Cons
MathWorks
  • MatLab is pricier than most of its competitors and because of this reason, many organizations are moving towards cheaper alternatives - mostly Python.
  • MatLab is inefficient when it comes to performing a large number of iterations. It gets laggy and often crashes. Python is better in this regard.
  • There is a limited number of hardware options (mostly NI) that can be connected directly to the data acquisition toolbox.
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Microsoft
  • Lack of button bar like ones found in Visual Studio.
  • Lack of integrated help that could link to YouTube, Channel 9, or other Microsoft videos on how to learn about features.
  • Integration with Team Foundation Server.
  • Would like to see it having some sort of integration into a Web API testing harness.
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Likelihood to Renew
MathWorks
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Solid tool that provides everything you need to develop most types of applications. The only reason not a 10 is that if you are doing large distributed teams on Enterprise level, Professional does provide more tools to support that and would be worth the cost.
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Usability
MathWorks
MATLAB is pretty easy to use. You can extend its capabilities using the programming interface. Very flexible capabilities when it comes to graphical presentation of your data (so many different kinds of options for your plotting needs). Anytime you are working with large data sets, or with matrices, MATLAB is likely to be very helpful.
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Microsoft
Looking at our current implementation, Microsoft Visual Studio Code is perfect for writing code and performing debug operations. Integration with SVN repository is easy and changes can be tracked effectively. Microsoft Visual Studio Code supports developers to write code productively using syntax check and easy customization. Microsoft Visual Studio Code also provides support for IntelliSense which prompts suggestions for code completion. It is easy to step through code using interactive debugger to inspect the root cause of error quickly.
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Support Rating
MathWorks
The built-in search engine is not as performing as I wish it would be. However, the YouTube channel has a vast library of informative video that can help understanding the software. Also, many other software have a nice bridge into MATLAB, which makes it very versatile. Overall, the support for MATLAB is good.
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Microsoft
Active development means filing a bug on the GitHub repo typically gets you a response within 4 days. There are plugins for almost everything you need, whether it be linting, Vim emulation, even language servers (which I use to code in Scala). There is well-maintained official documentation. The only thing missing is forums. The closest thing is GitHub issues, which typically has the answers but is hard to sift through -- there are currently 78k issues.
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Alternatives Considered
MathWorks
How MATLAB compares to its competition or similar open access tools like R (programming language) or SciLab is that it's simply more powerful and capable. It embraces a wider spectrum of possibilities for far more fields than any other environment. R, for example, is intended primarily for the area of statistical computing. SciLab, on the other hand, is a similar open access tool that falls very short in its computing capabilities. It's much slower when running larger scripts and isn't documented or supported nearly as well as MATLAB.
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Microsoft
[Microsoft] Visual Studio Code beats the competition due to its extensibility. Their robust extensions architecture combined with the plethora of mostly free extensions written by the community can't be beaten. The fact that this tool itself is provided by a world-recognized company, Microsoft, free of charge is phenomenal. The goodwill garnered by them is immeasurable. Other tools I've used were missing features or were just too rigid, too complicated, or too unsophisticated for my liking. The fact that VS Code is easy to mold to my will with the right extensions seals the deal.
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Return on Investment
MathWorks
  • MATLAB helps us quickly sort through large sets of data because we keep the same script each time we run an analyzation, making it very efficient to run this whole process.
  • The software makes it super easy for us to create plots that we can then show to investors or clients to display our data.
  • We are also looking to create an app for our product, and we will not be able to do that on MATLAB, therefore creating a limiting issue and a new learning curve for a programming language.
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Microsoft
  • Positive impact on minimizing time wasted by employees with software installation and setup
  • Positive impact on reducing spend on software licensing
  • Positive impact on minimizing time used to manage different applications for different purposes - this performs all of the functions we need in basic coding
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