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A comment on Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming ... by arcanus on Saturday January 30, 2016 @04:18PM (#11003797)
I also dislike R. Strongly disagree with the argument that MATLAB is more clear than python, however. Have you tried numpy/scipy? Provides excellent performance and very powerful APIs.

I've always found that a great deal of the MATLAB syntax does not gel with my expectations. "./" vs. "./" for instance, or using parenthesis to address array elements.

I would much prefer a truely OO capable language, as well.

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Re:Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming ... by wallacoloo on Saturday January 30, 2016 @06:50PM (#11004401)
The real killer about Matlab is its one-based indexing. Makes arithmetic index operations look ugly (and unintuitive) as hell.
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Re:Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming ... by TTPrograms on Saturday January 30, 2016 @08:21PM (#11004770)
It's one-based indexing combined with length being defined as the number of entries, IIRC. There was a blog post on here a few months ago that explained how you need one or the other to minimize the need for off-by-one corrections, though I can't find it now.

I'd consider switching to numpy (ignoring organizational issues) if it didn't take 10 times as many characters to describe all the operations. If you're spending you're day doing algorithm development having least squares and every linear algebra operation you can think of as first class citizens is a huge plus for readability and code cleanliness.

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Re:Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming ... by marcell on Saturday January 30, 2016 @05:07PM (#11004010)
> "./" vs. "./"

Is this a typo? It seems like two instances of the same thing

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Re:Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming ... by arcanus on Saturday January 30, 2016 @06:00PM (#11004199)
Ooops -- './' vs. '/.', e.g. right array vs. left array
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Re:Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming ... by TTPrograms on Saturday January 30, 2016 @08:14PM (#11004748)
It doesn't seem like '/.' is an operator. Do you mean './' vs '.\'? That tends to match my intuition.
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