Is Octave a sufficient alternative to MATLAB? I heard more advanced

R commander is also superb

>>62039490
>Is Octave a sufficient alternative to MATLAB?
Yes
>I heard more advanced programming with MATLAB can't be done with Octave
Octave is a drop-in replacement for all but the most advanced MATLAB, but still has equivalent structures and functions for more advanced programming. It just isn't drop-in.
>as far as basic use (intro to comp tools for egineering) can you manage with it?
Anything you're going to be doing in an introductory college course will be exactly same in MATLAB or Octave. You can write your shit in one and it will almost definitely run without any modifications on the other.

You could have found all this out with some basic research

>>62039490
No it's shit. Just pirate MATLAB

>>62039490
I tried Octave a few months ago. It would only open once, and all subsequent attempts to even open Octave afterwards failed.
During the one successful open, it did not successfully run a fairly basic Matlab script.

I'd like to like Octave, but my experience was a 0/10.

If you're at a University, the university should pay the MATLAB license and you should be able to get it for free as a student. Check the university's software catalogs.

But MATLAB sucks. Everyone (in physics anyway) is abandoning MATLAB for Python

I took an entire Matlab programming course and only used. Every now and then you have to resolve some dependency issues with redundant code but otherwise it works perfectly.

>>62039490

Just torrent Matlab.

>I'm a broke college student

Doesn't your school give out free Matlab licenses?

>>62039656
Matlab was never popular in physics.

Fortran -> C with perl glue code -> C++ with python glue code

>>62039490
Does your school not provide a MATLAB license for everyone in the class? Also you might trigger your TA's autism because your reports look different, or they may require some specific functionality that isn't emulated.

>>62039656
>>62039697
>>62039741
They have a small computer lab for engineering students but it's filled 90 percent of the time, and as far as giving out lisences they aren't willing considering our engineering program is shit compared to other in state schools

>>62039490
Matlab is like $50. Just buy it.

>>62039490
it lacks some neat stuff like filter design tools but otherwise it's pretty much the same

>>62039490
yaeh

MATLAB indexing ninja here

I haven't touched octave in five years because it was burning garbage. A personal MATLAB license is $150.

>>62039490
>I'm a broke college student who atm cannot afford to pay for MATLAB.
Then don't. I don't understand the issue. If you are given an assignment that requires matlab then use the version provided for you in the computer lab.

In my opinion, it is fucking stupid spending your money on software you don't need. Use the version provided by you school (that you already paid for). If you don't want to physically be in the lab then login remotely.

Want to use an alternative? Fine. I have used Octave. It works well enough but while in school, it is easier to login remotely then install Octave (and learn the tiny differences between octave and matlab). Now I prefer numpy/scipy/matplotlib over Matlab/Matlab variants. Of course you have to learn python to use it.

In my opinion, it is a waste of your money to buy Matlab and a waste of your time to use Octave. You have already paid for a Matlab license. Use it.

>>62039490
Computational scientist. You can get cheap versions of Matlab which I recommend going for. Octave is slow as balls on most computation no matter what the GNU shills will tell you. Octave's language is more general purpose compared to Matlab though.

The goof thing about matlab it that it's have a shit ton of toolbox and stuff that you'll will to use. The student license, with almost all the toolbox in matlab/simulink it's like 150 usd at most. Where do you study? I personally doesn't recommend using octave, it's not worth it.
I'm finishing my master tesis in EE and I've use on the regular basis some C, matlab, and python. With that you'll be ok.

>>62039542
>Octave is a drop-in replacement for all but the most advanced MATLAB,
I disagree, I quickly ran into problems where things would not compile identically between Octave and Matlab in very simple situations.

But it is probably close enough.

Anon, just pirate Matlab.

>Python
These are good and I like them, but as an engineering student, fuck dealing with that shit. I didn't have time to deal with dependencies and versioning and shit, I would rather give my fellow project-mates something in Matlab that I know they could run without weird issues.

The point of Matlab in this setting is that it is simple to jump into.

>>62039490
I used Octave to pass a signal processing course, and have to say, that the version matters a lot.
The one that was shipped with ubuntu was literal shit compared to the latest version.
But with the latest version, I only needed 1 or 2 functions that was not part of the octave-signal package. And that could be worked around.
Nowadays I think it is usable for most usecases.
For symulink, you need to use matlab, or you will fail.