alt Hacker NewsInteresting. I have always felt I am missing out on not using tools like Mathematica or MatLab. I see some people doing everything using MatLab, including building GUI and DL models, which I found surprising for a single software suite, and - nowadays - one that is quite affordable (at least the home edition).
Mathematica seems a little pricey but maybe it would motivate me to learn more math.
I would love to read what non-mathematicians use MatLab, Mathematica, and Maple for.
Replies
To be fair it was used a lot during my physics studies. I opted to use it afterwards for integrals and derivations, very powerful.
I'm a non-mathematician and I used it for lots of novel stuff - GIS, visualisations of all kinds, machine learning. The Wolfram Community staff picks is a great introduction into the varied things you can do: https://community.wolfram.com/content?curTag=staff%20picks
I used mathematica for real last time in SGI days and loved it. I know probably a ton has changed since, but I do have to ask those that use it today if you'd still use it for non math-heavy (and even so) tasks if you have access to the wonderful world of python and jupyter / polars, R, and similar?
MatLab was taught and used extensively at my university, and has many strong sides and a fantastic standard library. We used it mainly for physics and robotics calculations. The licenses are (were?) prohibitively expensive outside of academia though. Hard to compete with free Python + NumPy and a larger talent pool.