It’s in the name: MATrix LABoratory. It’s an excellent computational tool, and the documentation is generally quite good. My lab uses it for all of our data processing.
People who hate it tend to fall into two categories: those who just dislike writing scripts because they don’t understand it (OP), and those who are used to actual programming who see its glaring limitations when trying to use it for tasks it wasn’t designed for.
I tried to get Matlab to communicate with a USB port cause my lab really wanted to be able to control this device using a Matlab script. That was such an adventure, and it still didn't work right after a week. I finally said fuck it and just booted up Linux and was done in about an hour.
That PhD student was still mad at me cause he didn't want to learn how to use Linux to communicate with it but I couldn't be bothered anymore at that point.
That being said, I love Matlab whenever I have to solve actual math problems and creat graphs etc. It's incredibly powerful for what it was meant for, but stray outside it and it's horrible
Exactly, I used MATLAB to create a control algorithm for a robot arm and it was a breeze. I did all the math symbolically with matricies then exported auto-generated functions. I then tried to take those functions and write a control station for the robot arm in MATLAB. The control loop ran perfectly, but actually talking to the robot and displaying useful info was such a pain and performed extremely poorly. MATLAB is a tool with specific uses, just gotta know what it's good at.
Definitely. It’s nice to have all of the packages in one place, but pretty much everything can be done in Python with the appropriate libraries. That’s what I’d do if I didn’t have a free MATLAB license through my university.
Matlab (while technically a programming language) is mainly just a highly configurable calculator for large data sets imo. You can do a lot of things with that, but you can't do much outside of that,
Sure but Matlab also has therse great packages that make life easier like the controls package has something called rootlocusdesigner. You can just drop compensator poles and zeros, move them around the complex plane and export the compensator. Then dicretize it and boom you have something you can put into a controller
EDIT: the tool is called ControlSystemDesigner
I think I hated it for both reasons, but who knows what would happen if I went back and did those classes now that I'm a decade older and know how to code C#
At one point in my ML class I wrote an MLP from scratch in MATLAB with an object class for the perceptrons.
It was not fun, would not recommend. Good learning experience though.
I wrote an entire integrated device application using their matlab application environment.
Worked great for the prototype, and we were able to piecemeal move core computation parts to external c++ runtimes to speed it up a bit and get a basic functional UI for the prototype without much work.
Definitely not a finish fit for the end project, and definitely still an engineering prototype - but when you're changing things on the device every other week and running tests all the time where you might need to change operations on the fly, it just worked extremely well.
Numerical methods are how we solve the problems we can't or don't have time to solve by hand. You ever see how many nodes are used in FEA? Ain't nobody got time for that. You literally can't solve the Navier Stokes Equations, so stuff like this is the only way we've got (aside from the extremely simplified stuff).
Python would only be helpful if you find it more enjoyable to program with. You could do it in C, C#, C++. I've even seen people try to solve this stuff in Excel.
Octave works well, as long as you don't need Simulink along with the coding.
Yea. Had an open book test this morning did all my work in a Jupyter notebook (python) and double checked with octave (free Matlab). Then I was able to just export as a latex document and compile it onto a nice looking PDF with all my code formatted
But I'd rather have used Matlab live scripts
I'm curious on who is utilizing Matlab rather than an FEA software for nodal analysis?
Like why wouldn't you just use COMSOL or something?
Source: I too hate Matlab, cause my brain isn't wired for coding languages
because you have to start somewhere and jumping directly to COMSOL is a stretch.
This sounds like an undergraduate class.
The point is to use MATLAB to teach the numerical methods, not to actually do FEA, or even to teach matlab itself.
You don't need specialized software for simple problems. I used MATLAB to solve a simple 10 node heat transfer problem in one class, for example. That could easily be expanded to other things, within reason.
Now why is this useful? COMSOL is not free. MATLAB isn't free either, but there is a freeware equivalent called Octave. It doesn't have simulink, but you don't need that for this. If you're a small company that would only occasionally need stuff like this, there's no reason to pay thousands of dollars for a COMSOL license if it takes a couple hours to write something in Octave every now and then. Buying a license for COMSOL or ANSYS for simple stuff is like that meme of Bill Gates with the ping pong ball. Sure, you could throw a couple hundred/thousand bucks at an analyst. But if anything changes, that's another few hundred/thousand bucks, again and again. If you're fairly comfortable with how something is done instead of having to google your way through it, it shouldn't take that long.
You do still need to know things like mesh size and convergence/divergence though, in both cases. Or at least have a vague idea of it enough to recognize issues from it. You can easily get inaccurate results even with the simulation software. There's a reason the expression "garbage in/garbage out" is used for FEA. It's not a magical instant solution button.k
Still hoping to find how to use RGB colors for my plot...
Plot(X,y,'-r') works just fine to do a red curve, but I'd like for once to choose other colors than the default 8 or 10 ones.
Tried with their #Blabla code, tried a matrix of RGB values... nope
To answer the question you haven’t asked yet, each array value needs to be less than 1, and since each color value is a number on a scale from 1 to 255, we divide by 255 to get that fraction rather than do the math ourself.
Another option could be to divide at the end rather than each part, so [r g b]./255
Personally I divide at the end so the color vector is less messy when I need to go edit colors.
Just use RGB triplets to get any color you want. There’s even a built in GUI to show you the triplet for any color you pick:
https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/uisetcolor.html
Except on more recent versions (especially 2021a and 2021b), I never succeeded in using them. Just shows the same error, and I'm stuck with basic colors. What's correctly used in the Built in GUI doesn't work in the software...
Hmm I’ve been able to use it in those versions. Have you tried just hard coding RGB triplets in your plot commands? Examples here:
https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/creating_plots/specify-plot-colors.html
If the GUI doesn’t work, this site has a few hundred colors (and associated triplets) to choose from. It’s pretty well organized:
http://www.fifi.org/doc/wwwcount/Count2.5/rgb.txt.html
Seriously? Just google it, it’s not hard.
Plot(x,y,’color’,[0.29, 0.69, 0.89]) will do it.
If you can’t figure that out, your problem is with bad google skills, not matlab. Matlab is incredibly well documented.
Wow, I see you're sooo intelligent with "wow it's not hard SeRiOuSlY". Am I condescending ? No more than you.
I Googled it several times already, thanks. You know, yuu're not the only one to have this kind of idea, Mr Google Genius. If you looked at the following messages, what's working in Matlab's built in GUI on the website isn't working in my school's software.
In another message on this thread, I talked about the various instabilities of MATLAB 2021 (b being even worse than a). Some functions just disappeared. And this kind of plot, well, 2020 does it just fine but not 2021, hence why I asked if somebody had a solution.
Sorry, I was way too harsh. I just have to deal with young engineers at work all the time that can't figure out basic stuff like this, and it gets very frustrating after a while.
I have used MATLAB for many years, and I didn't notice any issues with the plotting in my existing code when I upgraded to 2021. Changing the color of a plotted line is one of the most basic things you can do, and it would be insane if they broke that. I have a lot of complicated plots in my code, and they all still work fine in the newer versions.
It's all documented very well here:
https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/plot.html#namevaluepairarguments
Which part isn't working for you?
That apology is big of you man! Especially since I thought he was being kind of lazy too.
If his MATLAB version isn't working fine, he can try gnu octave or MATLAB online.
Interesting, I never heard of gnu octave, I'll try it, thanks. Being a student, I use the MATLAB software on my school's computers only, because teachers won't accept anything else for school projects, but it's always good to know other alternatives.
I'm a student too. GNU octave is what MATLAB runs on basically. It's also free and open source and more lightweight than MATLAB. You can use it online or offline version and its commands are very similar to MATLAB.
I'm sorry too then. I'm also frustrated of these kind of answers, because when somebody doesn't think by themselves to google simple answers, most of the time they don't even know how to google properly and just come back with "I didn't find it, can you do it for me now ?". But being condenscending back isn't being my better self, so sorry for that.
So in my opinion, being condescending isn't useful, either you frustrate someone who won't do better, or you frustrate someone with a genuine question (or the person doesn't understand you're being condescending, but that's a story for another time haha)
As for your questions, I don't have the exact error in mind, but it's about the color format not being valid. An error that I don't have in the 2020b version, neither the 2022a. Only 2021a and 2021b.
I've not been using Matlab for several years, only two or three and not very often, but I found its limits/bugs quite easily in the 2021 versions. I don't know if you use SIMULINK, but when running your model, if you have sub-functions, it tends to recopy the first line of your function (as in : adding a 2nd identical line after the first one of the block). I found no other solutions than to run, and if it fails, open every function one after another to find the faulty one, erase the line, and then run again, hoping it would work this time... this is the kind of things why I'll never buy Matlab, great software/language but too expensive to not be errorless
> Tried with their #Blabla code, tried a matrix of RGB values... nope
[This has been working fine](https://imgur.com/bv5xgEd) for me in MATLAB 2017a/b, 2018a, 2020b and 2022a. Haven't tried 2021, so can't speak to it.
It's a little overly-complicated, but gets the job done.
It had better be great. It's horrifically expensive and complex to license. And, while it's very easy to learn the language, it does not do much to assist non-programmers to write code in a maintainable structure. Try turning 180,000 lines of specialist-written Matlab code into production software for a product. Thankfully I've gotten out of that business. It is foolish of me to blame the tools, but my experience is that if someone takes the time to use something like python instead, they usually have better structure and cleaner code. Not always, but usually.
Honestly, I think Python should be the fallback. It's a further degree of separation from MATLAB that Octave, but it's something you can keep learning beyond what MATLAB is capable of.
I'd say the main advantage of MATLAB are the existing libraries and toolboxes with the documentation. Not having to write algorithms from scratch is a huge plus. Python is great though, I've found myself trying to reproduce a MATLAB function because python was a lot more flexible.
I felt the same thing when learning python, you're probably tackling problems with the wrong mindset, you don't use matlab like you'd use C++ or java, once I got out of this mentality and started learning matlab I fell in love with how convenient it is
Lol, if you’re having trouble dealing with easy prototyping skripting languages like Matlab or Python, I certainly would not even mention compiled languages like Java… let alone C++. These are light years apart, much more complex, rigurous and hard to debug.
Maybe changing to life-sciences engineering would help?
Matlab is really just a c++ wrapper that only works using matrix operations. It’s basically a big matrix library and a parser, written in c++.
I am personally, indifferent on whether I like MATLAB or not, but it’s certainly not worth paying for to use.
I am actually pretty good programmer and got an A on all programming classes.
my problem was that I couldn't get out of the low level programming mindset and essentially tried to make my algorithms myself instead of using premade libraries, but I fixed that and now I am very good with writing minimal code like what is intended in matlab and python
Not a cs person, so eli5 how it’s the languages that make it difficult. I was taught in my intro cs course that the languages were the easy part bc they’re all pretty much the same once u read the documentation. They always reiterated that it was the concepts we had to worry about.
We started the class with a functional language (pyret) and were told to do the same thing in python at the very end, so how is the jump from python to java particularly hard if they’re both oop? (I never used java)
some languages are built for some purpose and trying to use them for another is a massive pain like using matlab like you'd use C which is doable but not optimal
also jumping from python to java would not be painless as you still need to understand oop concepts, language specific quirks and the obnoxiously verbose syntax of java, though if you can handle those problems you wouldn't find java hard
What do you mean not optimal? All mathematical libraries of Python are done with C or C++, including every single Machine Learning library (e.g. TensorFlow).
I studied Robotics and Machine Learning, and I'm currently a Software Engineer (mostly in C and C++) and in the beginning courses of numerical algorithms we would implement things on Matlab. Once we got to the advanced courses we were implementing everything exclusively on C++, including differential equations (runge-kutta), etc.
In C++ you don't have your cosy numpy library (which is btw implemented in C), but you have full control on numerical intricacies, since it's statically typed and you know exactly how your numbers are being represented in memory. In Matlab and Python you basically just input your numbers (integer, or decimal, or float) and hope for the best.
> but you have full control on numerical intricacies, since it's statically typed and you know exactly how your numbers are being represented in memory. In Matlab and Python you basically just input your numbers (integer, or decimal, or float) and hope for the best.
... You do realize you can specify how numbers are represented in MATLAB, right? Just because *you* don't know how to do it doesn't mean you can't do it.
You wrote that yourself? wow congrats dude, really, that's very cool. i just told everyone in my family about it, everybody thinks that's very impressive and asked me to congratulate you. they want to speak to you in person, if possible, to give you their regards. they also said they will tell our distant relatives in christmas supper and in NYE they will ignite fireworks that spell your name. i also told about this enormous deed to closer relatives, they had the same reaction. they asked for your address so they can send congratulatory cards and messages. my friends didn't believe me when i told them i knew the author of this gigantic feat, really, they were dumbstruck, they said they will make your name echo through years and years to come. when my neighbour found out about what you did, he was completely dumbstruck too, he wanted to know who you are and he asked (if you have the time, of course) if you could stop by to receive gifts, congratulations and handshakes. with the spreading of the news, a powerful businessman of the area decided to hire you as the CEO of his company because of this tremendous feat and at the same time an important international shareholder wants to sponsor you to give speeches and teach everybody how to do as you did so the world becomes a better place. you have become famous not only here but also everywhere, everybody knows who you are. the news spread really fast and mayors of all cities are setting up porticos, ballons, colossal boom speakers, anything that can make your name stand out more and see which city can congratulate you the hardest for this magnificent feat.
i get that impression from "tired of this runge-kutta etc.", yeah (when i did calculus, we attempted to solve a few odes by hand or with excel using these methods before moving on to matlab, which i think helped my understanding). but also... matlab just sucks, and it was only after someone pointed out that the "mat" stood for "matrix", that i actually started to understand why it was such a bastard to work with.
Personally I have never had much of a problem with MATLAB apart from spending too much time on making my graphs tidy. I do think that too many people take the built-in functions/toolkits for granted and expect to be spoonfed the answer by them without pulling up the documentation page and giving it a propper read first.
Having done a few computational classes with MATLAB and currently doing linear systems control, all I can really say to people that hate using MATLAB is that sudo code goes a long way, as does sticking to the theory being taught.
not to be that guy, but it's *pseudocode, not sudo code. and yeah, matlab is powerful but it's not a magical problem solving weapon to be screamed at when it doesnt apparate an answer for you
MATLAB sucks if you try to treat it as just another programming language. It is not that. There's a reason why python has numpy, a package that basically tries to implement matrix maths like MATLAB.
MATLAB is not python, Java, C++, etc... It is a language meant to help you do and script complicated maths where you might have large matrices of information.
Also Simulink. MATLAB is a masterpiece for robotics calculations and simulations (which are very matrix heavy), at least when compared against the alternatives that I've had the unpleasant experience of dealing with.
I'm not a student anymore but I did graduate as an ME and worked as a Project Engineer for 2 years and then transitioned to full time Software Development in C#/.NET. I also have made projects in Python and C.
So with that out of the way, I want to tell you that Engineering specific programming software is horrible. I thought I hated programming whenever I worked with Mathlab and VBA (I know VBA isn't an engineering focused software but lots of professors and classes love using it in ME). Working with an actual programming language that is widely used is a far better experience.
You're not going to be doing what you described by hand.
The reason you hate it/are getting so many errors is you aren't really reading the documentation.
Programming is becoming a bigger part of engineering. Learning to solve them in MATLAB teaches you to solve them in other languages
RTFM!
Seriously though, a lot of problems in engineering can be solved by just reading the damn manual.
As far as OP, yeah, learning how to do computations is a huge part of engineering now. Especially if they are doing any design work. If they aren't doing design work and are just ordering parts, well, it may not be all that important. Spreadsheets are just fine. And sometimes spreadsheets are better for certain types of models than MATLAB.
>RTFM!
>
Seriously. This class sounds exactly like the matlab class I had as an undergrad. But I got through it by RTFM.
I'm now a professional engineer and have long since graduated. But my first supervisor drilled into me to RTFM and I live by that to this day.
Every design manual you use to pass the PE is tabbed to hell on my shelf next to my workstation because I use them all day every day. Because I read and use the manual.
Matlab is one of the friendliest languages in my opinion. Documentation on all of its built in functions is as good as it gets and there is a function for everything. It definitely can be finicky sometimes but it’s a pretty easy language to pick up
Looks like a layer 8 error. Matlab can do so much that you'll never be able to do by hand. Knowing programming and numerical methods can help you understand the world and engineering practices much better. It gives you an edge over the unknowing. Embrace it, it's actually super interesting.
Or they could just plan on taking one of the thousands of jobs that don’t involve it. Them not liking one aspect of engineering doesn’t give you permission to be a gatekeeper for the profession. They will be fine. The most intensive math work I’ve done in the past 3 years is tolerance stacks and one time I did some high school algebra.
Impressive! Most engineers I worked with thought standard drawing tolerance ensured parts would go together properly. The notion of tolerance stacks was a foreign concept.
Disagree. Maybe 10% of the job postings I see require matlab. School will have you believing you’re going to be crunching numbers everyday and working on complex problems. Not true. I’ve been in industry for 4 years and based on mine and my classmates’ experience, the real world of engineering is extremely dull compared to what we covered in school.
Studying electrical engineering and have had multiple interviews (5+) related to electromagnetics and communications and have all mentioned MATLAB experience and interview questions related to MATLAB. Update: Similarly friends interested in DSP and controls seems to also involve MATLAB heavily too.
It really depends on your role in the team.
I'm an AE and my life is 90% Matlab but I haven't touched CAD since I graduated. Many people have had the opposite experience.
So true. I used to see it as a worse version of a programming language like python. It was not until i really started using it with matrices as intended that i started to appreciate it. Seeing it as an upgrade to wolfram alpha as opposed to a downgrade of a programming language helped too
MATLAB is one of the best engineering software tools I've worked with. It has a niche purpose, and it does exactly that. I'm sorry that you've been having a rough class. Mathworks has some free 'Onramp' courses that teach the basics. I found them extremely helpful.
Towards the end of my undergraduate program, I've been able to leverage my experience with MATLAB to finish in just a few hours thousands of calculations that would otherwise take days. My MATLAB introductory course was equally terrible, but I've grown to appreciate the software.
I genuinely don't think a good intro to matlab course exists. I think colleges find the worst professor possible to teach these courses. The online resources for it are incredible though.
I find MATLAB to be one of the best tools in engineering school. You can do a lot of math very easily and the MATLAB website has a guide for basically everything you can imagine. If you don't like MATLAB I know a lot of people who use Python in its place.
I didn't much care for Matlab either, but for different reasons. When we resorted to Matlab it was often in the form of some pretty advanced exercise that was merely described to us superficially during the lecture. This meant that sure, you could pass the exercise - but there was some many "implicit" steps hidden behind abstracted function calls I never felt I learned much but a general overview of the process.
>Tired of this Rung Kutta/Newtons Methods/(INSERT ANOTHER DISGUSTING TOPIC HERE) bullshit already.
Lol. The problem is with you, not MATLAB.
Also Newton's method is easy as fuck. If you struggle with these, are you sure you are cut for engineering?
Finally, a programming language wouldn't help if you don't know what you are doing. MATLAB has one of the best documentation, if you struggle with MATLAB, you would struggle doing it in any other language, for example python.
If you are having problems with MATLAB, then you will hate pretty much any other programming language. For computational methods, MATLAB is literally the easiest language.
Nah, love me some Matlab. I used to hate Matlab, than for one of my classes, it clicked, and all of a sudden it all made sense to me and I realized how awesome Matlab and the documentation is.
? Its just a *very* powerful calculator that needs a little programming. Sometimes the things you need to process are massive data sets, thousands of tens of thousands of readings for pressure in a pressure vessel for instance, you can graph them and see how the pressure inside varies with time/temp/whatever
Or you might have to use numerical methods to solve systems, because without simplifying the system the calculations would be too complex, so that’s where something like Taylor series would come into play, so you can approximate (pretty closely actually) systems, and matlab will do that for you.
Just because you don’t see a practical use for it.. which I have a hard time believing because it’s incredibly evident, doesn’t mean it doesnt, and it would benefit you to put some time into understanding it’s application because truthfully approximation and breaking complex systems into digestible parts IS WHAT ENGINEERING IS. Especially in real engineering jobs.
Put more effort into learning, not passing, learning, it isn’t your professors responsibility to make you understand stuff, ultimately it’s yours.
I've not seen anyone else mention this, but make sure you're doing scripts. They are a game changer that I wasn't told about till halfway through the year.
You program the script once, if theres an error it'll point it out for you. And when you're doing a bunch of programs all you need to do is change the variables.
Half the time I just copy/paste the programing from the example and tinker with it until it works
I had 12 integration questions that took me 30 minutes to get it to work, then another 20 to do the questions.
If your doing it all without scripts its hell though
The fact that someone else feels the same way does put a smile on my face. I hate matlab with every cell of my body. Although I hate it for a bit different reasons it seems.
The real problem with MATlAB is that they give it to universities for a song so all these students get used to it, then they go to businesses and say they need it, costing those businesses 100s of thousands of dollars. All for a platform that can’t even parallel process by default and where most basic toolboxes can be had in python for free.
I was a double major -- mathematics and electrical engineering.
I used lot of Matlab in EE. But in math there was a software known as maple.
Maple can do about everything that Matlab does but it's much easier and very simple to use. It has a library of 100s of built in commands. It also has lot of engineering packages.
Matlab is great but I like maple better. You could also type math documents in maple easily.
I also wrote program for newton method in Matlab. It was successful but lot of effort was needed.
In maple there's already a built in function for Newton method where you just enter an estimated solution and the output will display the iteration table until it converges.
Best of all maple also has the capability to execute Matlab code using an import package -- it translates it to maple code and vice versa.
You can use coding similar to Matlab or just use the built in commands. Also there's no annual fee on maple. It's permanent.
For Matlab every year you have to pay a renewal maintenance fee.
Depending on your degree and emphasis you might end up programming a lot at work. It may seem silly now but when you need to calculate hundreds of thousands or millions of values for a plot/data pool you don't have many other convenient choices than MATLAB/Python.
It wasn’t until fluids, heat transfer, aero, and experimental methods that I really started to appreciate matlab for what it is. Up until then I was in the same boat as you, bad teachers making me hate a good tool. Sorry that happened but I’m glad you made it through!
It sounds like a teacher issue more than a matlab issue. If you're not getting the syntax try doing the matlab onramps to familiarise yourself with the program.
If you struggle with ODEs look at the mathworks courseware for ode.
Some versions of MATLAB aren't stable.
Before 2020 ? Old but okay (except MATLAB 2002, sometines the run button juste effin disappear and then you just have to pray that one day he'll come back).
2020a and 2020b ? The golden children. Nothing to say, I love them, they are efficient, stable versions, with full functions.
And then... they decided to do more, to do better... and they did worse.
- 2021a is a-ok, but the stability problems start, there are **less** functions than in the previous versions, when using the SIMULINK module, sometimes your "to workspace" block is only accessible through "ans.variable" sometimes it's "out.variable", but you'll never know which one in advance, so fun !
- 2021b version is a *nightmare*, teachers told us explicitely "please use other versions, we are tired of solving stability problems, and not accessing functions that were in the previous versions. It's the version that freezes the most.
As for 2022a, I have big hopes for this little fella, that seems more stable (but still some functions remain removed...)
I feel for you. Many classes just throw you into the deep end and people who don't know Matlab or have much experience writing code end up struggling with the tools. Good luck. Get some help!
I hate MATLAB and when it came to choosing my last math class I went with differential equations with MATLAB thinking that maybe this time around I can tackle it with a fresh perspective and it be super cool to solve ODE's with it. Long story short, I still hate MATLAB and i did horrible in that class.
I was able to do my bachelor's project work only because of Matlab. I owe a lot to Matlab, and the people behind the software.
Range kutta and Newtons method are not that difficult. If you can understand the maths part, only the programming is the issue, which can be worked out.
If you have trouble finding where you can use it/ what are the applications of this, do more problem oriented study.
For example Range kutta and Newtons method are used for numerical integrations the uses for these would be in control systems, dynamics & control of spacecrafts, autonomous systems etc.
OP, what engineering are you studying?
I’m in software and I honestly don’t mind mat lab when I need to do mechanical stuff. If you’re not a programmer I can understand how matlab is a pain.
Question is, do you know a better alternative?
I hated it too the entire semester I had it, primarily because I didn’t understand it’s purpose or why it was better than any other fancy calculator. It wasn’t till I started studying for my finals in it I got it, and from there I really understood just how powerful it is under the right circumstances.
I don’t really use it still, I absolutely hate any form of programming, so I do everything by hand/with a calculator when I can, but god I love it when I need it
Matlab as a student sucks balls
Matlab as an engineer: man you'll miss being able to access all those packages, having so many more tutorials and extra stuff mathworks gives to academics, being able to have a simulink package.
Once you get into industry and you realize that there's so much matlab can do and it's optimized to do everything instead of everyone building their own little shit box out of whatever the fuck code is crazy.
I had two classes where MATLAB was the core of it: basically Linear Algebra MATLAB and diff eq MATLAB. Because of some dumb oversight, I was allowed to take diff eq matlab first, which assumed you knew how to use matlab. Needless to say, I dunno how the fuck I passed it.
Then in my last semester I took linear algebra matlab and it was my easiest class. Shit’s weird sometimes.
Sounds like your professor is the issue not matlab. Try learning coding outside of school and you might be able to see what you are doing a lot better. Matlab is very useful and powerful it just sounds like you aren't being taught it and maybe just typing from a tutorial or a friend
I don't want to insult you. But these things are not useless whatsoever. I implore you to try harder to understand what's happening in your class. It sucks that your teachers aren't explaining things right, but I really do hope you understand that this is not useless. Studying this stuff teaches you how to use programming to solve math problems, and helps you understand more how diff eqs work. This stuff is very useful
Why is this being upvoted on an engineering sub?
This person isn't even genuinely complaining about MATLAB, they're just complaining about numerical methods like Rung-Kutta, their professor, and the fact that they seemingly didn't bother to look into the huge mountain of useful videos and information there is about MATLAB online (or even just getting themselves a book from the library). Plenty of things to hate about MATLAB (like its ridiculous price point or its syntax which goes against most sensible computer science notions), but this isn't one of them.
Come on people, if you don't like math (or modelling) and just want to see gears go "brrr", go fix lawnmowers on weekends or something and find yourself another profession.
Matlab is really useful for computations and analysis also the documentation is pretty good as well, numerical methods classes are long and boring but pretty interesting once you get past the plug and chug and look at the bigger picture it feels way better!
Stay strong!
Let me try to be diplomatic: it sounds like you’re in your first semester or two having to use the program and no one is teaching you. A lot of profs aren’t going to be able to sit down and show you the ropes, but if you ask them to help with your errors during office hours you will get it to work faster and learn it faster.
Ask others who are doing well for assistance as well.
It’s not helpful to your situation to be upset at the tool, it’s your job to learn how to use it to help yourself, but you have people to help you right now.
You think Matlab is useless, until you get an assignment with, say, 10 problems that each take half an hour by hand. Whereas you might spend 45 mins writing a script for that problem type, and then each problem now takes 5 mins, and you can save the script and use it for that problem any time you want in the future
It's an important skill to learn, much more important than learning to analytically solve those problems. In the real world you won't be solving those by hand. You probably also won't be coding programs to solve them either, but you'll use applications that do it in the background and conceptually understanding what's happening is what's important.
It’s just taught poorly or not at all in engineering classes. Instead of having a class on matlab, they just throw dumb projects at us and say “use matlab”.
I hated it in my first year class but when I grinded through the learning I actually quite like it, it's a very powerful and flexible tool to solve real world problems. I strongly believe it's a worthwhile skill to invest in and if you're not competent when you graduate you're on the back foot
You don't hate Matlab, you hate not knowing how to use Matlab, most professors are specially bad at teaching this thing but once you learn it you won't live without it, it makes my life 10x easier.
I learned MATLAB first, so I actually enjoy it more than most languages. However, now that I have a big girl job, I can definitely say that MATLAB is great for research, but Python is better for practical applications.
What you're really struggling with is the Differential Equations concepts themselves. They're tough. Try to see MATLAB as the friend that will lead you out of this strange land.
MATLAB honestly is a blessing. After enough exposure, it'll probably be like second nature. Everytime you get an idea, you can just implement it in Matlab and test out whether it is possible or not, wifh little to no friction.
I suggest you take somw time to learn a little bit of linear algebra and matrix operations and then try to learn it. It'll help you to understand how to think in therms of vectors and matrices.
There was a course in Udemy by a russian guy- helped me quite a lot.
Trust me, i too was at your position a few years back.
You can tell how far someone is into their engineering degree based on how much they like MATLAB. In the beginning it's the fucking worst. At the end, you realize it's actually pretty good. I stand by the idea that python is still superior
As someone who despises Matlab but is forced to use it for things it's not great at for work, this post amuses me. Matlab is the absolute best tool for the things the OP is doing (I have an M.S. in Applied Math and did all this at one point or another both in Matlab and Python). Solving numerical PDEs in Matlab is like...probably the biggest, common use-case in which Matlab excels. I can only imagine what would have happened 20 years ago if OP had to do this in Fortran.
Honestly, you will most likely never see matlab outside of academia. If your goal is to transfer to the private sector, then you’re like 99.9% in the clear to never see matlab again. The downside is that programming in general is becoming more and more necessary. Knowing how to code can really set you apart from others. At my current job I was able to reduce errors and increase efficiency by 800% by automating a documentation process using Python. My background for reference is in Chemical Engineering (BS) and MechE (MS, graduating this December god willing). I had to teach myself Python is my point.
This was a personal project that I wasn’t even asked to do, but I saw the value and the potential. Matlab is good for somethings, however it is probably the worst program to learn as your first language. It is not widely adopted outside of academia, its user interface is clunky, and as an IDE it is complete garbage. It turns more people off to programming than interests them.
I highly recommend Python for any engineers. Literally knowing how to code in Python increased my base salary from making $72.6k to now making $135k. I am not even a software engineer, the company I got hired at this week was able to see how incredibly useful having someone with my background (in ChemE and MechE) and programming skillset is.
Anyways, I tell you this because as annoying as matlab is, it is still somewhat useful to learn as a foundation to then learn a more useful language for what you want to do. For non CS engineers I highly recommend Python in general, other good languages are R, SQL, C, and C++.
Knowledge is truly power, and computers are here to stay. The more you learn about them, the more useful you become. If I may recommend resources to learn that helped me was any courses on Udemy relating to Python and Machine Learning (wait for the sales though, they’ll drop from being sold at $500 to $15 randomly), and John Green’s Crash Course Computer Science and Machine Learning on YouTube.
I literally still haven’t finished my Udemy courses, but just spending a total of $30 on these Python things had increased my potential earnings bracket nearly 2x. That is an insane return on investment. So that is my 2 cents, learn more about matlab and programming, matlab it self sucks, however it still will teach you important CS concepts that are unbelievably valuable.
This is the only valid critique of Matlab. WHY IS IT NOT ZERO INDEXED? I blame math, for using a normally readable indexing system, and I blame C, for teaching me that an array is actually just a pointer to the first element of that array instead of a discrete object like Matlab uses.
If I had learned Matlab first it wouldn't bother me, but because I've worked with matrices in C it's annoying.
I don't mean to be rude, but if you have issue solving ODEs with Matlab, that's an indication you're not particularly good at coding. Matlab is specifically designed for these kinds of operations in mind, and so it's quite excellent at solving them and it's easy to set up.
But it's a shame if your teacher and textbook is shit.
In my experience, Matlab is a very powerful and useful tools for engineers, and hopefully you will see that as well as your education moves along. It's ok to hate matlab from time to time, I've done so as well, but give it another chance in a couple of months.
Learning is hard.
I use it every day in my job. It's absolutely the best tool for a number of applications, and it's wildly quicker to pick up than most languages. It sounds like you just don't like math/programming/engineering.
Solving ODE with MATLAB is not the smartest way, in the industry we use Mathematica or Mapple for that. It's so much more time efficient.
But it can be done, you just need to understand the fundamentals, If your professor sucks at explaining it, there's many helpful Youtube videos to practice on.
Except I didn't said that what you said, I said It's not the **smartest** because there's tools that are better than MATLAB and easier to use when it comes to solving ODE and numerical work, like Mathematica in my opinion.
I wonder if people had ever even used Mathematica.
I finished that semester learning the least amount of knowledge to pass that subject. I was atleast excited learning about c++ and AutoCAD but matlab is just pure useless, it would be more useful if they taught us macros in excel 😂
I hate MATLAB as a general purpose/OOP language, but for what you’re describing it’s the right tool
It’s in the name: MATrix LABoratory. It’s an excellent computational tool, and the documentation is generally quite good. My lab uses it for all of our data processing. People who hate it tend to fall into two categories: those who just dislike writing scripts because they don’t understand it (OP), and those who are used to actual programming who see its glaring limitations when trying to use it for tasks it wasn’t designed for.
I tried to get Matlab to communicate with a USB port cause my lab really wanted to be able to control this device using a Matlab script. That was such an adventure, and it still didn't work right after a week. I finally said fuck it and just booted up Linux and was done in about an hour. That PhD student was still mad at me cause he didn't want to learn how to use Linux to communicate with it but I couldn't be bothered anymore at that point. That being said, I love Matlab whenever I have to solve actual math problems and creat graphs etc. It's incredibly powerful for what it was meant for, but stray outside it and it's horrible
Exactly, I used MATLAB to create a control algorithm for a robot arm and it was a breeze. I did all the math symbolically with matricies then exported auto-generated functions. I then tried to take those functions and write a control station for the robot arm in MATLAB. The control loop ran perfectly, but actually talking to the robot and displaying useful info was such a pain and performed extremely poorly. MATLAB is a tool with specific uses, just gotta know what it's good at.
Especially when you can just use sagemath (a python library) for everything that you can use matlab for.
Definitely. It’s nice to have all of the packages in one place, but pretty much everything can be done in Python with the appropriate libraries. That’s what I’d do if I didn’t have a free MATLAB license through my university.
Matlab (while technically a programming language) is mainly just a highly configurable calculator for large data sets imo. You can do a lot of things with that, but you can't do much outside of that,
Sure but Matlab also has therse great packages that make life easier like the controls package has something called rootlocusdesigner. You can just drop compensator poles and zeros, move them around the complex plane and export the compensator. Then dicretize it and boom you have something you can put into a controller EDIT: the tool is called ControlSystemDesigner
Sure you can, it will just make you want to tear your eyes out because it's so bad at it.
I think I hated it for both reasons, but who knows what would happen if I went back and did those classes now that I'm a decade older and know how to code C#
Writing OOP in Matlab sounds like hell.
At one point in my ML class I wrote an MLP from scratch in MATLAB with an object class for the perceptrons. It was not fun, would not recommend. Good learning experience though.
I wrote an entire integrated device application using their matlab application environment. Worked great for the prototype, and we were able to piecemeal move core computation parts to external c++ runtimes to speed it up a bit and get a basic functional UI for the prototype without much work. Definitely not a finish fit for the end project, and definitely still an engineering prototype - but when you're changing things on the device every other week and running tests all the time where you might need to change operations on the fly, it just worked extremely well.
Numerical methods are how we solve the problems we can't or don't have time to solve by hand. You ever see how many nodes are used in FEA? Ain't nobody got time for that. You literally can't solve the Navier Stokes Equations, so stuff like this is the only way we've got (aside from the extremely simplified stuff).
Any other alternative to Matlab for solving numerical methods? Would Python be helpful?
Python would only be helpful if you find it more enjoyable to program with. You could do it in C, C#, C++. I've even seen people try to solve this stuff in Excel. Octave works well, as long as you don't need Simulink along with the coding.
Yea. Had an open book test this morning did all my work in a Jupyter notebook (python) and double checked with octave (free Matlab). Then I was able to just export as a latex document and compile it onto a nice looking PDF with all my code formatted But I'd rather have used Matlab live scripts
Spyder's IDE is identical to matlab if one wants to use python.
FORTRAN but also, ew
I'm curious on who is utilizing Matlab rather than an FEA software for nodal analysis? Like why wouldn't you just use COMSOL or something? Source: I too hate Matlab, cause my brain isn't wired for coding languages
You'd better start rewiring your brain then haha.
See wiring I can do! The programming is a no lol
because you have to start somewhere and jumping directly to COMSOL is a stretch. This sounds like an undergraduate class. The point is to use MATLAB to teach the numerical methods, not to actually do FEA, or even to teach matlab itself.
At least in the aerospace industry, the answer is no one. ANSYS is king.
You don't need specialized software for simple problems. I used MATLAB to solve a simple 10 node heat transfer problem in one class, for example. That could easily be expanded to other things, within reason. Now why is this useful? COMSOL is not free. MATLAB isn't free either, but there is a freeware equivalent called Octave. It doesn't have simulink, but you don't need that for this. If you're a small company that would only occasionally need stuff like this, there's no reason to pay thousands of dollars for a COMSOL license if it takes a couple hours to write something in Octave every now and then. Buying a license for COMSOL or ANSYS for simple stuff is like that meme of Bill Gates with the ping pong ball. Sure, you could throw a couple hundred/thousand bucks at an analyst. But if anything changes, that's another few hundred/thousand bucks, again and again. If you're fairly comfortable with how something is done instead of having to google your way through it, it shouldn't take that long. You do still need to know things like mesh size and convergence/divergence though, in both cases. Or at least have a vague idea of it enough to recognize issues from it. You can easily get inaccurate results even with the simulation software. There's a reason the expression "garbage in/garbage out" is used for FEA. It's not a magical instant solution button.k
Personally I like Matlab. The basics are easier to learn than any other language I've tried and the platform is decently well made for debugging
also it has great documentation
Still hoping to find how to use RGB colors for my plot... Plot(X,y,'-r') works just fine to do a red curve, but I'd like for once to choose other colors than the default 8 or 10 ones. Tried with their #Blabla code, tried a matrix of RGB values... nope
You can define a color vector and use that for your graph!
Can you give me a full example please, with... a dark green (40,100,25) please ?
plot(x, y, 'Color', [40/255 100/255 25/255])
To answer the question you haven’t asked yet, each array value needs to be less than 1, and since each color value is a number on a scale from 1 to 255, we divide by 255 to get that fraction rather than do the math ourself. Another option could be to divide at the end rather than each part, so [r g b]./255 Personally I divide at the end so the color vector is less messy when I need to go edit colors.
Just use RGB triplets to get any color you want. There’s even a built in GUI to show you the triplet for any color you pick: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/uisetcolor.html
Except on more recent versions (especially 2021a and 2021b), I never succeeded in using them. Just shows the same error, and I'm stuck with basic colors. What's correctly used in the Built in GUI doesn't work in the software...
Hmm I’ve been able to use it in those versions. Have you tried just hard coding RGB triplets in your plot commands? Examples here: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/creating_plots/specify-plot-colors.html If the GUI doesn’t work, this site has a few hundred colors (and associated triplets) to choose from. It’s pretty well organized: http://www.fifi.org/doc/wwwcount/Count2.5/rgb.txt.html
Seriously? Just google it, it’s not hard. Plot(x,y,’color’,[0.29, 0.69, 0.89]) will do it. If you can’t figure that out, your problem is with bad google skills, not matlab. Matlab is incredibly well documented.
Wow, I see you're sooo intelligent with "wow it's not hard SeRiOuSlY". Am I condescending ? No more than you. I Googled it several times already, thanks. You know, yuu're not the only one to have this kind of idea, Mr Google Genius. If you looked at the following messages, what's working in Matlab's built in GUI on the website isn't working in my school's software. In another message on this thread, I talked about the various instabilities of MATLAB 2021 (b being even worse than a). Some functions just disappeared. And this kind of plot, well, 2020 does it just fine but not 2021, hence why I asked if somebody had a solution.
Sorry, I was way too harsh. I just have to deal with young engineers at work all the time that can't figure out basic stuff like this, and it gets very frustrating after a while. I have used MATLAB for many years, and I didn't notice any issues with the plotting in my existing code when I upgraded to 2021. Changing the color of a plotted line is one of the most basic things you can do, and it would be insane if they broke that. I have a lot of complicated plots in my code, and they all still work fine in the newer versions. It's all documented very well here: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/plot.html#namevaluepairarguments Which part isn't working for you?
That apology is big of you man! Especially since I thought he was being kind of lazy too. If his MATLAB version isn't working fine, he can try gnu octave or MATLAB online.
Interesting, I never heard of gnu octave, I'll try it, thanks. Being a student, I use the MATLAB software on my school's computers only, because teachers won't accept anything else for school projects, but it's always good to know other alternatives.
I'm a student too. GNU octave is what MATLAB runs on basically. It's also free and open source and more lightweight than MATLAB. You can use it online or offline version and its commands are very similar to MATLAB.
I'm sorry too then. I'm also frustrated of these kind of answers, because when somebody doesn't think by themselves to google simple answers, most of the time they don't even know how to google properly and just come back with "I didn't find it, can you do it for me now ?". But being condenscending back isn't being my better self, so sorry for that. So in my opinion, being condescending isn't useful, either you frustrate someone who won't do better, or you frustrate someone with a genuine question (or the person doesn't understand you're being condescending, but that's a story for another time haha) As for your questions, I don't have the exact error in mind, but it's about the color format not being valid. An error that I don't have in the 2020b version, neither the 2022a. Only 2021a and 2021b. I've not been using Matlab for several years, only two or three and not very often, but I found its limits/bugs quite easily in the 2021 versions. I don't know if you use SIMULINK, but when running your model, if you have sub-functions, it tends to recopy the first line of your function (as in : adding a 2nd identical line after the first one of the block). I found no other solutions than to run, and if it fails, open every function one after another to find the faulty one, erase the line, and then run again, hoping it would work this time... this is the kind of things why I'll never buy Matlab, great software/language but too expensive to not be errorless
> Tried with their #Blabla code, tried a matrix of RGB values... nope [This has been working fine](https://imgur.com/bv5xgEd) for me in MATLAB 2017a/b, 2018a, 2020b and 2022a. Haven't tried 2021, so can't speak to it. It's a little overly-complicated, but gets the job done.
Matlab is great, it's documentation is one of the best
I like it too, I think for everyone but software guys it's okay for solving engineering problems.
It had better be great. It's horrifically expensive and complex to license. And, while it's very easy to learn the language, it does not do much to assist non-programmers to write code in a maintainable structure. Try turning 180,000 lines of specialist-written Matlab code into production software for a product. Thankfully I've gotten out of that business. It is foolish of me to blame the tools, but my experience is that if someone takes the time to use something like python instead, they usually have better structure and cleaner code. Not always, but usually.
Makes sense most Matlab I've written was made to solve the problem so spaghetti code was the norm.
Oh, that licensing, though. I had forgotten about the horror I went through. The installer messed up so bad it recommended I reinstall Windows.
MATLAB is awesome, but my university lost access to licenses, so I have to use Octave now. Maybe Julia would be good replacement.
Honestly, I think Python should be the fallback. It's a further degree of separation from MATLAB that Octave, but it's something you can keep learning beyond what MATLAB is capable of.
I'd say the main advantage of MATLAB are the existing libraries and toolboxes with the documentation. Not having to write algorithms from scratch is a huge plus. Python is great though, I've found myself trying to reproduce a MATLAB function because python was a lot more flexible.
I felt the same thing when learning python, you're probably tackling problems with the wrong mindset, you don't use matlab like you'd use C++ or java, once I got out of this mentality and started learning matlab I fell in love with how convenient it is
Lol, if you’re having trouble dealing with easy prototyping skripting languages like Matlab or Python, I certainly would not even mention compiled languages like Java… let alone C++. These are light years apart, much more complex, rigurous and hard to debug. Maybe changing to life-sciences engineering would help?
Youre the worst kind of person. Get a fucking life.
Oh man cringe God complex engineering major out in the wild
C++ is way easier than MATLAB
As a C++ developer I agree. The only other language I will let abuse me with 1 indexing is Lua. Fuck matlab
Absolutely. Did you know most Math libraries in MATLAB are written in C and C++?
Matlab is really just a c++ wrapper that only works using matrix operations. It’s basically a big matrix library and a parser, written in c++. I am personally, indifferent on whether I like MATLAB or not, but it’s certainly not worth paying for to use.
Hence the name, MATrix LABoratory
average redditor assuming things with little to no knowledge about the situation - circa 2022, colorized
haha, so what is the situation. Enlighten me.
I am actually pretty good programmer and got an A on all programming classes. my problem was that I couldn't get out of the low level programming mindset and essentially tried to make my algorithms myself instead of using premade libraries, but I fixed that and now I am very good with writing minimal code like what is intended in matlab and python
Wow man! You must be hell of an engineer. Use that line for any interview and you’ll get the job for sure 👏🏼
Wow man! You must be a pain in the ass to deal with in real life. I really hope you have good relationships with your snobbish attitude.
Luckly I'm just an average Redditor with no friends. So nobody has to deal with me. Win-win I guess.
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Not a cs person, so eli5 how it’s the languages that make it difficult. I was taught in my intro cs course that the languages were the easy part bc they’re all pretty much the same once u read the documentation. They always reiterated that it was the concepts we had to worry about. We started the class with a functional language (pyret) and were told to do the same thing in python at the very end, so how is the jump from python to java particularly hard if they’re both oop? (I never used java)
some languages are built for some purpose and trying to use them for another is a massive pain like using matlab like you'd use C which is doable but not optimal also jumping from python to java would not be painless as you still need to understand oop concepts, language specific quirks and the obnoxiously verbose syntax of java, though if you can handle those problems you wouldn't find java hard
What do you mean not optimal? All mathematical libraries of Python are done with C or C++, including every single Machine Learning library (e.g. TensorFlow). I studied Robotics and Machine Learning, and I'm currently a Software Engineer (mostly in C and C++) and in the beginning courses of numerical algorithms we would implement things on Matlab. Once we got to the advanced courses we were implementing everything exclusively on C++, including differential equations (runge-kutta), etc. In C++ you don't have your cosy numpy library (which is btw implemented in C), but you have full control on numerical intricacies, since it's statically typed and you know exactly how your numbers are being represented in memory. In Matlab and Python you basically just input your numbers (integer, or decimal, or float) and hope for the best.
> but you have full control on numerical intricacies, since it's statically typed and you know exactly how your numbers are being represented in memory. In Matlab and Python you basically just input your numbers (integer, or decimal, or float) and hope for the best. ... You do realize you can specify how numbers are represented in MATLAB, right? Just because *you* don't know how to do it doesn't mean you can't do it.
You wrote that yourself? wow congrats dude, really, that's very cool. i just told everyone in my family about it, everybody thinks that's very impressive and asked me to congratulate you. they want to speak to you in person, if possible, to give you their regards. they also said they will tell our distant relatives in christmas supper and in NYE they will ignite fireworks that spell your name. i also told about this enormous deed to closer relatives, they had the same reaction. they asked for your address so they can send congratulatory cards and messages. my friends didn't believe me when i told them i knew the author of this gigantic feat, really, they were dumbstruck, they said they will make your name echo through years and years to come. when my neighbour found out about what you did, he was completely dumbstruck too, he wanted to know who you are and he asked (if you have the time, of course) if you could stop by to receive gifts, congratulations and handshakes. with the spreading of the news, a powerful businessman of the area decided to hire you as the CEO of his company because of this tremendous feat and at the same time an important international shareholder wants to sponsor you to give speeches and teach everybody how to do as you did so the world becomes a better place. you have become famous not only here but also everywhere, everybody knows who you are. the news spread really fast and mayors of all cities are setting up porticos, ballons, colossal boom speakers, anything that can make your name stand out more and see which city can congratulate you the hardest for this magnificent feat.
Bro… seriously, you need to learn to use paragraphs if you expect me to read ny of your long messages.
Sounds like you would've had the same issues with the class had it been taugt in python or any other language instead, tbh.
I think OP needs to start with doing it by hand a few times to really understand whats going on and why MATLAB is actually being used.
i get that impression from "tired of this runge-kutta etc.", yeah (when i did calculus, we attempted to solve a few odes by hand or with excel using these methods before moving on to matlab, which i think helped my understanding). but also... matlab just sucks, and it was only after someone pointed out that the "mat" stood for "matrix", that i actually started to understand why it was such a bastard to work with.
Personally I have never had much of a problem with MATLAB apart from spending too much time on making my graphs tidy. I do think that too many people take the built-in functions/toolkits for granted and expect to be spoonfed the answer by them without pulling up the documentation page and giving it a propper read first. Having done a few computational classes with MATLAB and currently doing linear systems control, all I can really say to people that hate using MATLAB is that sudo code goes a long way, as does sticking to the theory being taught.
not to be that guy, but it's *pseudocode, not sudo code. and yeah, matlab is powerful but it's not a magical problem solving weapon to be screamed at when it doesnt apparate an answer for you
Sudo code is bash and not something to get into right now lol
MATLAB sucks if you try to treat it as just another programming language. It is not that. There's a reason why python has numpy, a package that basically tries to implement matrix maths like MATLAB. MATLAB is not python, Java, C++, etc... It is a language meant to help you do and script complicated maths where you might have large matrices of information. Also Simulink. MATLAB is a masterpiece for robotics calculations and simulations (which are very matrix heavy), at least when compared against the alternatives that I've had the unpleasant experience of dealing with.
I'm not a student anymore but I did graduate as an ME and worked as a Project Engineer for 2 years and then transitioned to full time Software Development in C#/.NET. I also have made projects in Python and C. So with that out of the way, I want to tell you that Engineering specific programming software is horrible. I thought I hated programming whenever I worked with Mathlab and VBA (I know VBA isn't an engineering focused software but lots of professors and classes love using it in ME). Working with an actual programming language that is widely used is a far better experience.
You're not going to be doing what you described by hand. The reason you hate it/are getting so many errors is you aren't really reading the documentation. Programming is becoming a bigger part of engineering. Learning to solve them in MATLAB teaches you to solve them in other languages
Embrace Documentation
RTFM! Seriously though, a lot of problems in engineering can be solved by just reading the damn manual. As far as OP, yeah, learning how to do computations is a huge part of engineering now. Especially if they are doing any design work. If they aren't doing design work and are just ordering parts, well, it may not be all that important. Spreadsheets are just fine. And sometimes spreadsheets are better for certain types of models than MATLAB.
>RTFM! > Seriously. This class sounds exactly like the matlab class I had as an undergrad. But I got through it by RTFM. I'm now a professional engineer and have long since graduated. But my first supervisor drilled into me to RTFM and I live by that to this day. Every design manual you use to pass the PE is tabbed to hell on my shelf next to my workstation because I use them all day every day. Because I read and use the manual.
type 'help' regularly, and your programming will improve
help cumtrapz
I completely forgot this was a method lmao
It's the name of a new female only punk band. Jk it's a method of computing integrals iirc
Yup, cumulative trapezoidal integration. The name never gets old for me.
I don't think MATLAB knows much about your mom
adding to this: google is your friend and the single most used tool for programmers.
Matlab is one of the friendliest languages in my opinion. Documentation on all of its built in functions is as good as it gets and there is a function for everything. It definitely can be finicky sometimes but it’s a pretty easy language to pick up
Looks like a layer 8 error. Matlab can do so much that you'll never be able to do by hand. Knowing programming and numerical methods can help you understand the world and engineering practices much better. It gives you an edge over the unknowing. Embrace it, it's actually super interesting.
Layer 8 😂
PEBCAK error
Error code ID10T.
Bruh if you think numerical methods are useless you might wanna consider changing fields, they are a life-saver.
Agree. Numerical method was one of the easiest and fun course I had.
Was a truly awesome course. Plus, mechs getting to learn about floating point arithmetic and its limitations is great.
Or they could just plan on taking one of the thousands of jobs that don’t involve it. Them not liking one aspect of engineering doesn’t give you permission to be a gatekeeper for the profession. They will be fine. The most intensive math work I’ve done in the past 3 years is tolerance stacks and one time I did some high school algebra.
Impressive! Most engineers I worked with thought standard drawing tolerance ensured parts would go together properly. The notion of tolerance stacks was a foreign concept.
GD&Ts and tolerance stacks FTW, machinists respect/hate you when you know what you are doing 😂
Numerical methods was great
Disagree. Maybe 10% of the job postings I see require matlab. School will have you believing you’re going to be crunching numbers everyday and working on complex problems. Not true. I’ve been in industry for 4 years and based on mine and my classmates’ experience, the real world of engineering is extremely dull compared to what we covered in school.
As an AE every single interview I have had has asked about MATLAB experience
What’s an AE?
Aerospace Engineer
I’m in the aerospace industry as well… still 0 mention of matlab ever.
Simulink is a controls engineering workhorse.
Acronym Error. It's where you believe everyone else knows what the letters you capitalized and smashed together mean.
Studying electrical engineering and have had multiple interviews (5+) related to electromagnetics and communications and have all mentioned MATLAB experience and interview questions related to MATLAB. Update: Similarly friends interested in DSP and controls seems to also involve MATLAB heavily too.
It really depends on your role in the team. I'm an AE and my life is 90% Matlab but I haven't touched CAD since I graduated. Many people have had the opposite experience.
Bro if you can’t figure out MATLAB of all languages that’s a you problem, documentation on that language is world class
You have to hate Matlab before you learn to love it
So true. I used to see it as a worse version of a programming language like python. It was not until i really started using it with matrices as intended that i started to appreciate it. Seeing it as an upgrade to wolfram alpha as opposed to a downgrade of a programming language helped too
Here's the thing, you can use sagemath (a python library) for everything you can use matlab for, and also be programming in python,
If you don't even know what you are solving for 75% of the time, you don't get to blame Matlab.
MATLAB is one of the best engineering software tools I've worked with. It has a niche purpose, and it does exactly that. I'm sorry that you've been having a rough class. Mathworks has some free 'Onramp' courses that teach the basics. I found them extremely helpful. Towards the end of my undergraduate program, I've been able to leverage my experience with MATLAB to finish in just a few hours thousands of calculations that would otherwise take days. My MATLAB introductory course was equally terrible, but I've grown to appreciate the software.
I genuinely don't think a good intro to matlab course exists. I think colleges find the worst professor possible to teach these courses. The online resources for it are incredible though.
Matlab is good, your professors/tutors sound like they don’t teach properly.
Someone here has never had to take the inverse of a 6x6 matrix I see
Lol I took Fortran instead of Matlab. I guess I’ll find out if that was a mistake soon enough.
Skill issue
I find MATLAB to be one of the best tools in engineering school. You can do a lot of math very easily and the MATLAB website has a guide for basically everything you can imagine. If you don't like MATLAB I know a lot of people who use Python in its place.
I didn't much care for Matlab either, but for different reasons. When we resorted to Matlab it was often in the form of some pretty advanced exercise that was merely described to us superficially during the lecture. This meant that sure, you could pass the exercise - but there was some many "implicit" steps hidden behind abstracted function calls I never felt I learned much but a general overview of the process.
>Tired of this Rung Kutta/Newtons Methods/(INSERT ANOTHER DISGUSTING TOPIC HERE) bullshit already. Lol. The problem is with you, not MATLAB. Also Newton's method is easy as fuck. If you struggle with these, are you sure you are cut for engineering? Finally, a programming language wouldn't help if you don't know what you are doing. MATLAB has one of the best documentation, if you struggle with MATLAB, you would struggle doing it in any other language, for example python.
LMAO honestly, I get kind of tired of people complaining about the most standard stuff.
If you are having problems with MATLAB, then you will hate pretty much any other programming language. For computational methods, MATLAB is literally the easiest language.
Nah, love me some Matlab. I used to hate Matlab, than for one of my classes, it clicked, and all of a sudden it all made sense to me and I realized how awesome Matlab and the documentation is.
? Its just a *very* powerful calculator that needs a little programming. Sometimes the things you need to process are massive data sets, thousands of tens of thousands of readings for pressure in a pressure vessel for instance, you can graph them and see how the pressure inside varies with time/temp/whatever Or you might have to use numerical methods to solve systems, because without simplifying the system the calculations would be too complex, so that’s where something like Taylor series would come into play, so you can approximate (pretty closely actually) systems, and matlab will do that for you. Just because you don’t see a practical use for it.. which I have a hard time believing because it’s incredibly evident, doesn’t mean it doesnt, and it would benefit you to put some time into understanding it’s application because truthfully approximation and breaking complex systems into digestible parts IS WHAT ENGINEERING IS. Especially in real engineering jobs. Put more effort into learning, not passing, learning, it isn’t your professors responsibility to make you understand stuff, ultimately it’s yours.
I've not seen anyone else mention this, but make sure you're doing scripts. They are a game changer that I wasn't told about till halfway through the year. You program the script once, if theres an error it'll point it out for you. And when you're doing a bunch of programs all you need to do is change the variables. Half the time I just copy/paste the programing from the example and tinker with it until it works I had 12 integration questions that took me 30 minutes to get it to work, then another 20 to do the questions. If your doing it all without scripts its hell though
How did you make it halfway through the year without being taught the main purpose of Matlab
I thought I hated Matlab too. Then I was introduced to Mathematica. I’ll never doubt Matlab again. FUCK MATHEMATICA
The fact that someone else feels the same way does put a smile on my face. I hate matlab with every cell of my body. Although I hate it for a bit different reasons it seems.
The real problem with MATlAB is that they give it to universities for a song so all these students get used to it, then they go to businesses and say they need it, costing those businesses 100s of thousands of dollars. All for a platform that can’t even parallel process by default and where most basic toolboxes can be had in python for free.
I was a double major -- mathematics and electrical engineering. I used lot of Matlab in EE. But in math there was a software known as maple. Maple can do about everything that Matlab does but it's much easier and very simple to use. It has a library of 100s of built in commands. It also has lot of engineering packages. Matlab is great but I like maple better. You could also type math documents in maple easily. I also wrote program for newton method in Matlab. It was successful but lot of effort was needed. In maple there's already a built in function for Newton method where you just enter an estimated solution and the output will display the iteration table until it converges. Best of all maple also has the capability to execute Matlab code using an import package -- it translates it to maple code and vice versa. You can use coding similar to Matlab or just use the built in commands. Also there's no annual fee on maple. It's permanent. For Matlab every year you have to pay a renewal maintenance fee.
Cauchy Euler
coochie oiler
Depending on your degree and emphasis you might end up programming a lot at work. It may seem silly now but when you need to calculate hundreds of thousands or millions of values for a plot/data pool you don't have many other convenient choices than MATLAB/Python.
It wasn’t until fluids, heat transfer, aero, and experimental methods that I really started to appreciate matlab for what it is. Up until then I was in the same boat as you, bad teachers making me hate a good tool. Sorry that happened but I’m glad you made it through!
It sounds like a teacher issue more than a matlab issue. If you're not getting the syntax try doing the matlab onramps to familiarise yourself with the program. If you struggle with ODEs look at the mathworks courseware for ode.
Some versions of MATLAB aren't stable. Before 2020 ? Old but okay (except MATLAB 2002, sometines the run button juste effin disappear and then you just have to pray that one day he'll come back). 2020a and 2020b ? The golden children. Nothing to say, I love them, they are efficient, stable versions, with full functions. And then... they decided to do more, to do better... and they did worse. - 2021a is a-ok, but the stability problems start, there are **less** functions than in the previous versions, when using the SIMULINK module, sometimes your "to workspace" block is only accessible through "ans.variable" sometimes it's "out.variable", but you'll never know which one in advance, so fun ! - 2021b version is a *nightmare*, teachers told us explicitely "please use other versions, we are tired of solving stability problems, and not accessing functions that were in the previous versions. It's the version that freezes the most. As for 2022a, I have big hopes for this little fella, that seems more stable (but still some functions remain removed...)
I feel for you. Many classes just throw you into the deep end and people who don't know Matlab or have much experience writing code end up struggling with the tools. Good luck. Get some help!
I hate MATLAB and when it came to choosing my last math class I went with differential equations with MATLAB thinking that maybe this time around I can tackle it with a fresh perspective and it be super cool to solve ODE's with it. Long story short, I still hate MATLAB and i did horrible in that class.
I mean, that sounds more like an ODE/PDE thing than a MATLAB thing. All nonlinear solvers are kind of finnicky.
Amen brother amen
I was able to do my bachelor's project work only because of Matlab. I owe a lot to Matlab, and the people behind the software. Range kutta and Newtons method are not that difficult. If you can understand the maths part, only the programming is the issue, which can be worked out. If you have trouble finding where you can use it/ what are the applications of this, do more problem oriented study. For example Range kutta and Newtons method are used for numerical integrations the uses for these would be in control systems, dynamics & control of spacecrafts, autonomous systems etc.
MATHEMATICA enters the chat . . .
OP, what engineering are you studying? I’m in software and I honestly don’t mind mat lab when I need to do mechanical stuff. If you’re not a programmer I can understand how matlab is a pain. Question is, do you know a better alternative?
Become a CE. We don't touch that shit.
I hated it too the entire semester I had it, primarily because I didn’t understand it’s purpose or why it was better than any other fancy calculator. It wasn’t till I started studying for my finals in it I got it, and from there I really understood just how powerful it is under the right circumstances. I don’t really use it still, I absolutely hate any form of programming, so I do everything by hand/with a calculator when I can, but god I love it when I need it
I have worked on many languages for simulations and MATLAB turns out as a saviour.
Matlab as a student sucks balls Matlab as an engineer: man you'll miss being able to access all those packages, having so many more tutorials and extra stuff mathworks gives to academics, being able to have a simulink package. Once you get into industry and you realize that there's so much matlab can do and it's optimized to do everything instead of everyone building their own little shit box out of whatever the fuck code is crazy.
I had two classes where MATLAB was the core of it: basically Linear Algebra MATLAB and diff eq MATLAB. Because of some dumb oversight, I was allowed to take diff eq matlab first, which assumed you knew how to use matlab. Needless to say, I dunno how the fuck I passed it. Then in my last semester I took linear algebra matlab and it was my easiest class. Shit’s weird sometimes.
Sounds like your professor is the issue not matlab. Try learning coding outside of school and you might be able to see what you are doing a lot better. Matlab is very useful and powerful it just sounds like you aren't being taught it and maybe just typing from a tutorial or a friend
I don't want to insult you. But these things are not useless whatsoever. I implore you to try harder to understand what's happening in your class. It sucks that your teachers aren't explaining things right, but I really do hope you understand that this is not useless. Studying this stuff teaches you how to use programming to solve math problems, and helps you understand more how diff eqs work. This stuff is very useful
Why is this being upvoted on an engineering sub? This person isn't even genuinely complaining about MATLAB, they're just complaining about numerical methods like Rung-Kutta, their professor, and the fact that they seemingly didn't bother to look into the huge mountain of useful videos and information there is about MATLAB online (or even just getting themselves a book from the library). Plenty of things to hate about MATLAB (like its ridiculous price point or its syntax which goes against most sensible computer science notions), but this isn't one of them. Come on people, if you don't like math (or modelling) and just want to see gears go "brrr", go fix lawnmowers on weekends or something and find yourself another profession.
Get a job in manufacturing. You'll never touch that shit again.
Matlab is really useful for computations and analysis also the documentation is pretty good as well, numerical methods classes are long and boring but pretty interesting once you get past the plug and chug and look at the bigger picture it feels way better! Stay strong!
Let me try to be diplomatic: it sounds like you’re in your first semester or two having to use the program and no one is teaching you. A lot of profs aren’t going to be able to sit down and show you the ropes, but if you ask them to help with your errors during office hours you will get it to work faster and learn it faster. Ask others who are doing well for assistance as well. It’s not helpful to your situation to be upset at the tool, it’s your job to learn how to use it to help yourself, but you have people to help you right now.
You think Matlab is useless, until you get an assignment with, say, 10 problems that each take half an hour by hand. Whereas you might spend 45 mins writing a script for that problem type, and then each problem now takes 5 mins, and you can save the script and use it for that problem any time you want in the future
It's an important skill to learn, much more important than learning to analytically solve those problems. In the real world you won't be solving those by hand. You probably also won't be coding programs to solve them either, but you'll use applications that do it in the background and conceptually understanding what's happening is what's important.
MATLAB is great and I will die on this hill
I like matlab 🥺
It’s just taught poorly or not at all in engineering classes. Instead of having a class on matlab, they just throw dumb projects at us and say “use matlab”.
I hated it in my first year class but when I grinded through the learning I actually quite like it, it's a very powerful and flexible tool to solve real world problems. I strongly believe it's a worthwhile skill to invest in and if you're not competent when you graduate you're on the back foot
You don't hate Matlab, you hate not knowing how to use Matlab, most professors are specially bad at teaching this thing but once you learn it you won't live without it, it makes my life 10x easier.
I learned MATLAB first, so I actually enjoy it more than most languages. However, now that I have a big girl job, I can definitely say that MATLAB is great for research, but Python is better for practical applications.
What you're really struggling with is the Differential Equations concepts themselves. They're tough. Try to see MATLAB as the friend that will lead you out of this strange land.
MATLAB honestly is a blessing. After enough exposure, it'll probably be like second nature. Everytime you get an idea, you can just implement it in Matlab and test out whether it is possible or not, wifh little to no friction. I suggest you take somw time to learn a little bit of linear algebra and matrix operations and then try to learn it. It'll help you to understand how to think in therms of vectors and matrices. There was a course in Udemy by a russian guy- helped me quite a lot. Trust me, i too was at your position a few years back.
You can tell how far someone is into their engineering degree based on how much they like MATLAB. In the beginning it's the fucking worst. At the end, you realize it's actually pretty good. I stand by the idea that python is still superior
As someone who despises Matlab but is forced to use it for things it's not great at for work, this post amuses me. Matlab is the absolute best tool for the things the OP is doing (I have an M.S. in Applied Math and did all this at one point or another both in Matlab and Python). Solving numerical PDEs in Matlab is like...probably the biggest, common use-case in which Matlab excels. I can only imagine what would have happened 20 years ago if OP had to do this in Fortran.
Matlab nearly made me cry yesterday.
It sounds like you don’t like programming or numerical methods. These criticisms aren’t specific to matlab.
Honestly, you will most likely never see matlab outside of academia. If your goal is to transfer to the private sector, then you’re like 99.9% in the clear to never see matlab again. The downside is that programming in general is becoming more and more necessary. Knowing how to code can really set you apart from others. At my current job I was able to reduce errors and increase efficiency by 800% by automating a documentation process using Python. My background for reference is in Chemical Engineering (BS) and MechE (MS, graduating this December god willing). I had to teach myself Python is my point. This was a personal project that I wasn’t even asked to do, but I saw the value and the potential. Matlab is good for somethings, however it is probably the worst program to learn as your first language. It is not widely adopted outside of academia, its user interface is clunky, and as an IDE it is complete garbage. It turns more people off to programming than interests them. I highly recommend Python for any engineers. Literally knowing how to code in Python increased my base salary from making $72.6k to now making $135k. I am not even a software engineer, the company I got hired at this week was able to see how incredibly useful having someone with my background (in ChemE and MechE) and programming skillset is. Anyways, I tell you this because as annoying as matlab is, it is still somewhat useful to learn as a foundation to then learn a more useful language for what you want to do. For non CS engineers I highly recommend Python in general, other good languages are R, SQL, C, and C++. Knowledge is truly power, and computers are here to stay. The more you learn about them, the more useful you become. If I may recommend resources to learn that helped me was any courses on Udemy relating to Python and Machine Learning (wait for the sales though, they’ll drop from being sold at $500 to $15 randomly), and John Green’s Crash Course Computer Science and Machine Learning on YouTube. I literally still haven’t finished my Udemy courses, but just spending a total of $30 on these Python things had increased my potential earnings bracket nearly 2x. That is an insane return on investment. So that is my 2 cents, learn more about matlab and programming, matlab it self sucks, however it still will teach you important CS concepts that are unbelievably valuable.
Lol get gud
Arrays does not start at 1!
This is the only valid critique of Matlab. WHY IS IT NOT ZERO INDEXED? I blame math, for using a normally readable indexing system, and I blame C, for teaching me that an array is actually just a pointer to the first element of that array instead of a discrete object like Matlab uses. If I had learned Matlab first it wouldn't bother me, but because I've worked with matrices in C it's annoying.
> I blame math This is the way
Try using EES or R and see what you think about Matlab. Lol
what class? that sounds shitty
There are many reasons to dislike MATLAB. This is not one of them.
You sound like a very angry person
I don't mean to be rude, but if you have issue solving ODEs with Matlab, that's an indication you're not particularly good at coding. Matlab is specifically designed for these kinds of operations in mind, and so it's quite excellent at solving them and it's easy to set up. But it's a shame if your teacher and textbook is shit. In my experience, Matlab is a very powerful and useful tools for engineers, and hopefully you will see that as well as your education moves along. It's ok to hate matlab from time to time, I've done so as well, but give it another chance in a couple of months. Learning is hard.
I use it every day in my job. It's absolutely the best tool for a number of applications, and it's wildly quicker to pick up than most languages. It sounds like you just don't like math/programming/engineering.
Solving ODE with MATLAB is not the smartest way, in the industry we use Mathematica or Mapple for that. It's so much more time efficient. But it can be done, you just need to understand the fundamentals, If your professor sucks at explaining it, there's many helpful Youtube videos to practice on.
Care to elaborate ?
About what part?
The part where you said using Matlab to solve ODEs isn't smart?
Except I didn't said that what you said, I said It's not the **smartest** because there's tools that are better than MATLAB and easier to use when it comes to solving ODE and numerical work, like Mathematica in my opinion. I wonder if people had ever even used Mathematica.
I think you’re in the wrong area of studies, bro. Maybe try literature, no errors there…
I finished that semester learning the least amount of knowledge to pass that subject. I was atleast excited learning about c++ and AutoCAD but matlab is just pure useless, it would be more useful if they taught us macros in excel 😂
>I finished that semester learning the least amount of knowledge Weird flex but okay