Robert G. Brown wrote:
On Fri, 27 Jan 2006, Gerry Creager wrote:
Mathcad and MatLab both have their uses but I'm not real happy seeing
MatLab now seen as a parallelizable modeling tool. We're installing
it for our Civil Engineering dept. so they can run some code they
have, so I'll have more opinion about it shortly. What I fear is
that, in using such a high-level "language" to script their models and
analyses, the students... and the prof's... will have failed to
understand the errors when they make 'em.
Duke's engineering school uses matlab ditto, and we've started using it
(or octave, the OS variant) to a limited extent in physics courses. And
we've use Mathematica for many years in upper level courses.
I think a fair way to view the use of things like matlab, octave, visual
python, mathematica, maple is that they are at best very mediocre
programming environments -- that isn't really their purpose. So much so
that it isn't really fair to call them a "programming language" although
they have many of the features of one and can be used as one.
What they are "good" for is teaching physics (or, I'm sure, certain
parts of engineering), especially where visualization or certain kinds
of numerical exploration are the object of the exercise.
They are really good at solving "one time" problems or ones where the
optimization you can get from coding does not justify the investment in
time needed for coding (or learning how to do so). This takes them
considerably beyond being just teaching tools.
Josh Halpern
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