What do you see the advantages of Python/pandas/numpy/etc over matlab as? Do you use any toolboxes?

Basically, pandas, numpy, and matplotlib give me everything I could have wanted out of matlab from a numerical capabilities and graphing perspective.

In my opinion, matlab's excellent object inspection and debugging capabilities can be replaced with strict testing standards in your code-base.

On top of that, I get to use a whole slew of libraries that are non mathematically related -- frameworks for web services, accessing ftp servers, sending e-mails -- a lot of automated "utility" stuff.

And it is all "free". Fantastic.

not the person you're responding to, however I also made the change in the financial industry for a variety of reasons.

but the main one for me, was that python does non-math things much better than matlab. Since python is a general purpose language you can go from analysis to production application much faster, whereas with matlab it usually involved getting a software developer to rewrite it in java.

We used to take our python analysis code, wrap it up in a web app, and then use that to server risk information to traders, and it was quite easy to do so.

Sounds like an interesting business. The link in your profile seems to be invalid, fyi.

It was my personal site that I recently "scrubbed" off the web. I updated my profile for my business site. Thanks for the reminder.