Matlab

[Morgan McGuire <address@hidden>]

--- George <gpoonen@mathworks.com> wrote:
> Another language that we have not talked about is MATLAB. It is very
> popular in engineering depts. and with engineers. In engineering 
> schools it is used by about 70% of the population. Somewhat similar 
> to Python, although not as comprehensive for non-engineering 
> applications.

Before I met Python, Matlab was my scripting language of choice. 
Recalling this leads me to new definition of lightweight language, or
at least "scripting language"...

A lightweight language has one data structure and uses it well.

Perl, TCL - String
Python, Scheme - List
Matlab - Matrix

All of these (well, I don't actually know TCL and Perl) offer other
data types, but if you use the predominant data type things go much
more smoothly.  The key is that when there is one form of I/O, you can
hook lots of things together easily.  As pointed out at the conference,
this trades short term ease of use against long-term maintainability.

-m

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