mthirsch

> For me, personally, I use Octave at home when prototyping algorithms because I'm cheap and haven't paid the ~$1k for a Matlab license.

FWIW, you can get a home copy of MATLAB for $149: https://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab-home/

> In my experience for real-time implementation, neither Matlab nor Python are considered efficient enough, even after using something like the Matlab compiler or Python's psyco or equivalent. Again, in my experience, C is by far the most popular choice.

MATLAB Compiler won't make code any faster - it's still just running MATLAB engine underneath the hood. MATLAB Coder converts to C code optimized for real-time systems