Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Python is the new Matlab and Mathematica combined.


Not anywhere near Mathematica, but a good replacement for Matlab. From a daily user of all those.


I forget who said it, but Python isn't the best at anything but it's decent to good at nearly everything, and that's why it's become so popular.

I do a lot of what I need symbolically in SymPy for dynamics analysis. Past that, I can't speak for it. At University I used Mathematica, but I just don't need all it can do at this point, so once again Python has proven to be "good enough." Matlab will be a similar story (e.g., I've never seen a good alternative to Simulink in Python).

But for everything else outside very specific domain tasks? Mathematica and Matlab are terrible for a lot of reasons. So I'll go out of my way to stay within the Python ecosystem, though I'm not afraid to pull out the specialty tools when I just can't make Python do the task near as well and/or nearly as quickly.


You are right in a way, but don't completely dismiss SymPy. Though I can see why you would never try it properly if you have a Mathematica license.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: