Re: struct weirdness

[Robert T. Short]

On 08/26/2012 03:21 PM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> On 26 August 2012 11:36, Robert T. Short <address@hidden> wrote:
> > On 08/26/2012 07:51 AM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> > > > "Octave's intended audience generally are people who don't know any other
> > > > programming language" -
> > > > what, people doing scientific computations are computer languages
> > > > illiterate ?
> > > Usually, yes.
> > This is a little harsh.  Speaking for myself and many of my colleagues,
> > MATLAB/octave is NOT the current tool of choice, but MATLAB has created an
> > environment that we are stuck with.
> Yes, but the reason we got stuck with this in the first place is that
> most of us didn't know any better. The evolution of the Matlab
> language is full of amateurish mistakes that no other commonly used
> language I know of exhibits. Even ugly languages like C++ have an
> evolution that makes sense and demonstrate that the designer wasn't
> asleep at the wheel.
>
> - Jordi G. H.
No argument.  The original MATLAB was a small chunk of FORTRAN that was 
wrapped around LINPACK and EISPACK.  I don't believe it was ever really 
*designed* and then when it grew it was never rethought - at least not 
as far as I can tell.  There is probably a lesson there....