Dependable software for matrix computation
June 06, 2018
Dependable software for matrix computation
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with MATLAB
I work as part of a climate modeling team at the University of Vermont, which includes faculty from many departments and universities. We use MATLAB for handling and processing climate data in the form of NetCDF files. MATLAB has a library called netCDF that facilitates the opening, viewing, and manipulation of NetCDF files. In addition, the climate modeling team, of which I am a member, is also part of a larger research group. Although it varies, most members of the research group use MATLAB for some or all of their analyses. MATLAB makes it easy to process and manipulate large files, making our research more efficient.
- I LOVE the MATLAB debugger. It's probably the best debugger I've ever used. You can easily set breakpoints and run through code line by line. This is immensely helpful in locating hard to find bugs.
- The GUI interface to MATLAB is also very intuitive. The menu has options for quickly creating functions, scripts, and debugging. You can also view all your variables in the variable environment, which is helpful. For example, you can click on a matrix you created within the variable window, and you can view its dimensions and attributes.
- The help function in MATLAB is also very good. You can get help for any function by typing 'help '. The help function is useful because it also lists many examples of how to use the function you need help on. The online help for MATLAB is also very good and includes tons of examples.
- It would be great if MATLAB was open source, although that is unlikely to ever happen. I have the luxury of owning a license through my work, but I would not be able to afford it if I could not get it through my work.
- I am also an R user, and I appreciate that in R, you can run code line by line very easily. However, in MATLAB it is a bit more difficult.
- I am not a fan of MATLAB cell arrays...they are very difficult to work with. In addition, the plotting functionalities and options in MATLAB are not great. I would never use Matlab to create publication - quality figures.
- MATLAB has increased our productivity (being able to publish papers quickly).
- MATLAB has its own file type (.mat), which sometimes makes collaboration with colleagues who don't use MATLAB a bit more difficult. It is very easy and efficient to save a file as a .mat file, but if a collaborator does not have MATLAB, it is difficult for them to view the file.
- MATLAB helped us reach research milestones and stipulated by the grant under which my team is funded.
I like the user interface of MATLAB and find it most intuitive compared to any of the other three programs I listed. However, unlike RStudio and Oracle VM VirtualBox, MATLAB is not open source. I do prefer MATLAB over PyCharm, because I find MATLAB to be a bit more intuitive. I very much prefer open source software because it makes collaboration and sharing data with other people so much easier. However, MATLAB is a great tool and very dependable. I do not recall it ever crashing!