Page 7 of 7

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 8:23 am
by JanB1
Talvieno wrote:Fake and old, but funny, yes. :P
Yeah, the last one was really funny. ^^

Didn't know it was that old... :(

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 9:02 am
by Scytale
They taught us Python because they had long beards and didn't believe in paying for software

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 9:29 am
by JanB1
Scytale wrote:They taught us Python because they had long beards and didn't believe in paying for software
That...seems a little out of context... :D

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 9:52 am
by Scytale
JanB1 wrote:
Scytale wrote:They taught us Python because they had long beards and didn't believe in paying for software
That...seems a little out of context... :D
Haha sorry, I meant as an alternative to teaching MATLAB with its high licensing fees, and that, from a student's perspective they're very similar syntactically for numerical purposes. It's also about as easy to teach as MATLAB, for those purposes, and you get it for zero cost.

The long beards just means they liked Linux and open source as a matter of course.

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 12:12 pm
by Cornflakes_91
And scilab, which is matlab compatible, wasnt good enough? :ghost:

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 12:38 pm
by Scytale
Cornflakes_91 wrote:And scilab, which is matlab compatible, wasnt good enough? :ghost:
No, and neither was GNU Octave. Besides, if you're going to go with an alternative to MATLAB, Python seems the more versatile for pedagogical purposes, not to mention applicable to a wider range of problems.

If I were teaching a course in physical engineering that needed a quick language to teach in and I didn't care for the licencing cost of MATLAB, Python would make a lot of sense to me.

e: and since Python is so well-documented, it means that if students are having problems there are plenty of resources online for them. Along with most matlab capability added through numpy, scipy, and matplotlib, it's just a logical choice.

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 12:53 pm
by JanB1
Scytale wrote:
Cornflakes_91 wrote:And scilab, which is matlab compatible, wasnt good enough? :ghost:
No, and neither was GNU Octave. Besides, if you're going to go with an alternative to MATLAB, Python seems the more versatile for pedagogical purposes, not to mention applicable to a wider range of problems.

If I were teaching a course in physical engineering that needed a quick language to teach in and I didn't care for the licencing cost of MATLAB, Python would make a lot of sense to me.

e: and since Python is so well-documented, it means that if students are having problems there are plenty of resources online for them. Along with most matlab capability added through numpy, scipy, and matplotlib, it's just a logical choice.
Hmm...thank you for this really interesting and well thought through look at this whole situation. :thumbup:

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 12:59 pm
by Scytale
JanB1 wrote:
Scytale wrote:
Cornflakes_91 wrote:And scilab, which is matlab compatible, wasnt good enough? :ghost:
No, and neither was GNU Octave. Besides, if you're going to go with an alternative to MATLAB, Python seems the more versatile for pedagogical purposes, not to mention applicable to a wider range of problems.

If I were teaching a course in physical engineering that needed a quick language to teach in and I didn't care for the licencing cost of MATLAB, Python would make a lot of sense to me.

e: and since Python is so well-documented, it means that if students are having problems there are plenty of resources online for them. Along with most matlab capability added through numpy, scipy, and matplotlib, it's just a logical choice.
Hmm...thank you for this really interesting and well thought through look at this whole situation. :thumbup:
No worries, and that's kind of you! But uh, I'm still not a programmer, and I daresay there will be computer scientists more qualified than I to comment on this. My perspective is just as an engineer and for how the useful the language may be for teaching.

I don't doubt that if you really wanted a proper MATLAB alternative to do exactly what MATLAB does, or as close to it as possible, then Scilab and Octave would be great because they're built for that purpose. I just think Python is much more accessible on all these fronts for a student's perspective.

I also personally suspect it's easier to move from Python to other, lower-level languages for numerical purposes than it is for MATLAB, but again, IANACS.

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 3:54 pm
by Graf
I like python as well, though I am not very experienced with it. I have been using structs in C for ages, but the topic has never been broached for MATLAB in my courses. Python seems more adaptive to me, considering all the libraries that are easily accessible and we'll documented, but I haven't played much with MATLAB on my own time either so maybe similar libraries for MATLAB exist and I just am not aware of them. I just don't see writing a serial communication program in MATLAB, you know?

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 11:05 am
by Talvieno
Interesting survey by Stackoverflow: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/surv ... e=Iterable

There's a wealth of programmer information there - everything from "what language do you hate most" (VB6) to "the average time a programmer wakes up" (oddly, about 7am - few night owls participated!) to "How often do you exercise" (a full third of those surveyed don't exercise at all).

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 1:58 pm
by 0111narwhalz
Talvieno wrote:
Tue Mar 13, 2018 11:05 am
few night owls participated
They all slept in :ghost:

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 7:56 pm
by Flatfingers
Yeah, I saw a reference to this today. Apparently the latest crop of developers think Rust is awesome.

...is it?

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2018 1:21 pm
by Damocles
Version Control
Professional Developers:
Git 88.4%
Subversion 16.6%
Team Foundation Version Control 11.3%
Copying and pasting files to network shares 7.7%
Zip file back-ups 7.7%
Mercurial 3.7%
I don't use version control 3.7%

zips and copying, productivity the good old way!

--

Plus it seems profitable to know Erlang ...

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 6:23 am
by Cornflakes_91
Talvieno wrote:
Tue Mar 13, 2018 11:05 am
"the average time a programmer wakes up" (oddly, about 7am - few night owls participated!)
or there were just a lot of people who have a job :ghost:

Re: Programming Experience

Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 6:29 am
by Dinosawer
Uh yeah, I'm a night owl, but I have to get up at 6 or I don't get home in the evening on a reasonable hour to eat dinner. Currently it's already after 6 PM when I'm home, which is late enough :P