Hacker's guide to Neural Networks

Re:Hacker's guide to Neural Networks by tacos on Monday March 23, 2015 @07:38AM (#9250360)

Since you linked to several thousand words explaining the differences between the languages, as well as the following quote: "The plan is for the GUI to be considered stable with version 4.0" then I'll assume you haven't used either product. I assure you that I did not spend $4k just to insult the open source community.

Love open source, glad they're doing it, much love to the devs -- and life is just too fucking short. If you're broke or screwing around--ok, maybe. If you're sitting in it more than an hour a week, maybe Photoshop is worth the $10/month vs GIMP, dig?

And if you're in school and get it for free or are interested in getting up to speed with the state of the art in machine learning and qualify for the personal license at under 200 bucks? I can't think of a better tool.

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Re:Hacker's guide to Neural Networks by profinger on Monday March 23, 2015 @11:09AM (#9251313)

For the record, Photoshop > (GIMP)x10000 IMHO. (Just finally glad I found someone that may agree)

I've not used Matlab but I've used Octave (during the ml class from Andrew Ng) and it wasn't too awful. Occasionally very frustrating though so if Matlab solves those frustrations I could see it being worth it if you're going to spend time in it!

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Re:Hacker's guide to Neural Networks by GordyMD on Monday March 23, 2015 @08:17AM (#9250465)

Several thousand? Evidently you like to exaggerate. The content is circa 1000 words - but the point it makes in relation to this context is delivered in the first sentence.

I've used both before. Matlab in my CompSci BS and MS and Octave in my professional career.

I'm just making the point that your critique of Octave seems a little harsh, and to the Leyman skews the reality - that Octave is an open source alternative. Yes, a little rough around the edges if you intend to use the visual aspects of the tool, but for matrix multiplication etc it has its use cases.

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Re:Hacker's guide to Neural Networks by tacos on Monday March 23, 2015 @10:40AM (#9251156)

The page you link is actually a shortened form and links to the real list: http://wiki.octave.org/FAQ#How_is_Octave_different_from_Matl... which comes in at 2,662 words.

The parts you say are good about Octave are EXACTLY the stuff I use Python and R for. If you want to use a Matlab library or toolkit, maybe cut in paste some code from a paper, do a quick 'what if' thing -- Octave just doesn't cut it.

(My point in speaking up here isn't to diss Octave it's to re-center the reality around Matlab.)

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