Brian Kirklin wrote:
As long as there are advantages to using Matlab over Octave there will
always be people who use Matlab. In particular, you rarely have to worry
about bugs when working with Matlab, there are significant speed
advantages due to JIT compiling, the graphics end doesn't crash, and
everything is well documented, etc.
Ok the JIT and a large number of toolbox functions is a given for
matlab, but I'd disagree on the issue of bugs.. I'd had a number of bugs
in Matlab in the past and the response from their support was always
along the lines of "known bugs aren't bugs but rather are features".
The classic one was "speye(n).^0" which I believe they finally fixed in
2007b even though I reported it 5 years ago. The only bug I've had to
worry about in Octave recently have been ones that push the limits of
the compatibility between Octave/Matlab with things like function
handles defined in sub-functions.. Also having the Octave source means
that any bugs I find I can and do fix myself rather than waiting on the
whim of mathworks support staff to fix.