Re: Octave and Database connectivity

[Philip Nienhuis]

Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso-2 wrote
> 
> On 12 September 2012 16:29, Philip Nienhuis <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso-2 wrote
> 
>>> I really recommend once more to use another language. Octave and
>>> Matlab are both essentially glorified wrappers over 30-year-old
>>> Fortran libraries and ill-suited for the programming needs of today.
>>> They are both awful general-purpose languages. Yes, people use these
>>> two languages to write web servers and email clients, but it's really
>>> a case of a square peg in a round hole. They do one thing and one
>>> thing oly well, and that is array-oriented numerical computation.
>>> Everything else about these two is unpleasant:
>>>
>>>     http://abandonmatlab.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/hello-world/
>>>
>>
>> Maybe that's the natural inclination if you're a mathematician or
>> software
>> engineer. But I see no reason to be that negative about Matlab and its
>> OSS
>> siblings in other settings.
> 
> Read the rest of that blog for other reasons. Matlab was never
> designed as a general-purpose language. It was a wrapper for Netlib
> libraries because writing Fortran is too difficult. It's still mostly
> that, a wrapper. The language is poorly designed, awkward, full of
> decades-old warts.
> 

Oh sure, I read that blog before, plus several more applying analogous
reasoning to various other programming languages / operating systems /
whatever: car types, building materials, spices, medicine, protective
clothing, ....
I'm pretty sure that for every programming language / operating system /
whatever, you can find one or more blogs outlining that that very
programming language / OS / whatever should be abandoned because ... (fill
in analogous line of reasoning as above).

All very true, without doubt; but that doesn't quite rule out that thing "A"
may turn out to actually be very handy for unintended aim "B" in setting "C"
when used by group "D". It is a bit like serendipity.

In my previous post (I'm not going to repeat the contents) I outlined what
my colleagues and me appreciate in Matlab and Octave. I see most of those
aspects being ignored in that blog you referred to. I'm even afraid that the
blogger is blissfully unaware of them.

You'll get my point: blog opinions optionally disguised as authoritative
guidelines are very useful for reflection, but may not always apply so
linearly out there in the real world. 
Oh well, <shrug> in the end they're just opinions.

Anyway they make for entertaining reading just before bed time :-)

Philip 




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