Society of Robots - Robot Forum
Software => Software => Topic started by: Spoil9 on January 14, 2009, 09:56:34 PM
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I have done a search for MATLAB on here and glanced over all the questions (as most of them are the same) however my question is slightly different.
I am taking the first of many electronics classes in school, and my prof. is making us learn MATLAB for projects and says that we will use it more as we progress through school. My question is, is MATLAB used outside of school in the real world work place? Is this software that I will see again in the future or is it something that only a few schools use?
Thanks for humoring me.
- Will
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There are MATLAB ads in almost every issue of IET and they claim that the users number in the millions.
Wiki says that in 2004, MathWorks claimed that over a million people in industry and academia used it, and to be honest, even if you don't use too much after school, it'll probably teach you a lot of skills you can apply to some of the other functional languages like FORTRAN and stuff...ya know incase you ever need to use fortran xD
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I've used it myself in several schools\universities and I know for a fact that many other are using it to. The probability for you using it later on in your career is pretty high (depends on what job you get, of course)
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To be honest, I have only a slight clue of what I want to do with my EE degree if/when I get it. All I know is that I would like to do something with alternative energy, power generation and/or automotive electronics in regards to electric cars. But I'm sure that will change in the next few years as I progress in school. Right now I'm just having a heck of a time with derivatives.
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My question is, is MATLAB used outside of school in the real world work place? Is this software that I will see again in the future
Yes and yes.
I personally don't like MATLAB because there is a lot of syntax to memorize, has a like of quirks, and isn't that intuitive. But I see it often used if your a working scientist. At my last job my coworkers used it to simulate robot control loops. I've also seen it used for computer vision. I've had to use it for 3D data processing.
A lot of R&D companies require you to know MATLAB to get a job with them.
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Check out GNU Octave if you want something open source / free. I use it in place of MATLAB for most of my work, though MATLAB has many toolboxes that are used by specific industries that Octave does not. However, in most situations I have found that I can use Octave just as easily as MATLAB. Also, most Octave code can be run/compiled with MATLAB, which is nice for when you need to share code with others.
Check it out:
http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/
Oh, and Octave doesn't have a Simulink counterpart. If you want that check out Scilab (run the command scicos from Scilab command prompt).
http://www.scilab.org/
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MATLAB is absolutely used beyond school if you are going to work as an engineer. I personnlay prefer MathCAD over MATLAB for most of my work, but MATLAB is easier when doing calculations that involve matrices (thats what it was originally designed for). Most engineering schools pick one of the math applications (MAPLE is popular also) and use it for everything in the school- so most likely your school has picked MATLAB and you will continue to use it until you graduate, so get to know it.
After graduation it will depend on what you do and where you work. I know engineers that have used MATLAB and Simulink to create engineering software programs as control systems for development projects.
While the syntax can be a bit of a problem, if you get a job doing very similar calcualtions on a variety of systems, you can set up MATLAB (or MATHCAD) with the calculations, then just run it with the inputs for each job. You dont have to set it up again every time.
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That's awesome. I have to learn this for these classes anyways, I'm just happy that I'm learning something that is used out side the academic scene. I will deffinatly pay more attention to this now so I have something to put on my resume.
Thanks everyone.