Re: How does Octave shine?

[Søren Hauberg]

Hi,
  So this might not be the answer you're looking for, but to me, Octave
has two advantages that makes it the most important piece of software on
my machine

  1) It's Free Software. This mean that I can read the source code when
things don't work. When Matlab fails, you have to work around matlabs
limitations. When Octave fails, you can figure out why this is the case.
>From a scientific point of view, you also have the option of opening
every single blackbox. When you use Octave/Matlab for prototyping it's
very important to be able to know what Octave/Matlab does when you need
to implement the same algorithm in C/C++. (You get the idea)

  2) The Community. Not only are the Octave people very friendly, they
are also extremely smart. The tips you get on these mailing lists can
really save your day.

So my answers to your question wasn't the technical ones I think you're
looking for, but I think they are important.

Søren

ons, 20 09 2006 kl. 19:57 +0000, skrev Cameron Laird:
> I'm helping put together a presentation on the potential of open-source
> software in engineering situations; I'd love one or two or three very
> pointed examples of work Matlab effectively can't do but Octave makes
> easy.  Although I've used Octave occasionally over the last year, I'm 
> not current or expert with it.  What shows Octave off to best 
> advantage for a Matlab-using audience?  Is it the ODE or nonlinear
> algebraic solver?  Variable-length argument- and result-passing?  Who's
> good at Octave advocacy?
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