Wolfram Language ( Mathimatica) or Matlab

[Pelop17]

Hello guys, 

Well my question is the difference between Wolfram Language - or Mathematica  and Matlab. Does anyone has experience with both ? And which is better and in what prospective you have decided it. I search the internet before coming here but I wasnt able to retrieve much and I got a little bit comfused.

Another question ... I am interesting in Electrical Engineering therefore if anyone is an electrical engineering was it difficult to learn matlab ? And also since I have 1 year until the time comes to go to the university I want to get the most of that year therefore is it possible to learn Matlab or Mathematica even if you dont have univeristy level education?

 

Thanks

[Brooksie359]

24 minutes ago, Pelop17 said:

Hello guys, 

Well my question is the difference between Wolfram Language - or Mathematica  and Matlab. Does anyone has experience with both ? And which is better and in what prospective you have decided it. I search the internet before coming here but I wasnt able to retrieve much and I got a little bit comfused.

Another question ... I am interesting in Electrical Engineering therefore if anyone is an electrical engineering was it difficult to learn matlab ? And also since I have 1 year until the time comes to go to the university I want to get the most of that year therefore is it possible to learn Matlab or Mathematica even if you dont have univeristy level education?

 

Thanks

Matlab is what most engineers use. I know from my experience as a mechanical engineering student mathematica is usually taught as a tool to help do math problems in calculus classes but once you go into real engineering problems most people use Matlab. it should be possible to learn the basics of Matlab without being in college but it really depends on how good you are at learning and what resources you have available.

[Pelop17]

3 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Matlab is what most engineers use. I know from my experience as a mechanical engineering student mathematica is usually taught as a tool to help do math problems in calculus classes but once you go into real engineering problems most people use Matlab. it should be possible to learn the basics of Matlab without being in college but it really depends on how good you are at learning and what resources you have available.

 

3 hours ago, Erik Sieghart said:

I picked up Mathematica in high school.

In my experience, it's something you learn because you just do it so often.
 

I'd take Mathematica over Matlab any day of the week. But I'm a software engineer (in degree, not title), so that's a "soft" engineering discipline.

Honestly anyone looking for serious compute power would be better served using appropriate python libraries.

Thanks for anwering

What about python , I investigated a little but I wasnt able to conclude somewhere.... There matlab is must for engineering like fortran used to be and still is. Mathematica is just a quick tool lets say ... Correct me If I am wrong.

So I am able to learn both matlab and mathematica but I need to have a level of enginnerring background to be able to do any programming right ? Its not just like other programming languages right ?

[Ktk]

I've used mathematica a little for school, matlab a lot more (for academic research), and python even more than that (for web programming, data wrangling)

Python is certainly the most well-known language of the three in general, and MATLAB is not uncommon to see in EE. An EE company using Mathematica extensively would be quite rare.

 

You don't need any engineering knowledge to program in any of these languages. Look up some starting guides on them, they're not so scary once you get started! Just look 'em up. Matlab starter guide, for instance: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/learn_matlab/desktop.html

 

Octave is an open-source competitor regarding MATLAB. You may want to look at that if you want to get a feel for how MATLAB is like.

 

In EE, MATLAB is often used to simulate and test things. MATLAB+Simulink is a great way to (relatively simply) simulate environments computationally before starting to make a complicated physcial testing setup.

 

Some companies are moving away from MATLAB in favor of open-source (read: FREE) alternatives like Python, which is a language with far more reach and developer interest than MATLAB. Check out all these open-source Python libraries that replicate many features that are often used in scientific computing: https://scikits.appspot.com/scikits

 

Mathematica is interesting and fun to use, but for EEs, I don't see any compelling reason to suggest it over MATLAB+Python.

[Brooksie359]

39 minutes ago, Ktk said:

I've used mathematica a little for school, matlab a lot more (for academic research), and python even more than that (for web programming, data wrangling)

Python is certainly the most well-known language of the three in general, and MATLAB is not uncommon to see in EE. An EE company using Mathematica extensively would be quite rare.

 

You don't need any engineering knowledge to program in any of these languages. Look up some starting guides on them, they're not so scary once you get started! Just look 'em up. Matlab starter guide, for instance: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/learn_matlab/desktop.html

 

Octave is an open-source competitor regarding MATLAB. You may want to look at that if you want to get a feel for how MATLAB is like.

 

In EE, MATLAB is often used to simulate and test things. MATLAB+Simulink is a great way to (relatively simply) simulate environments computationally before starting to make a complicated physcial testing setup.

 

Some companies are moving away from MATLAB in favor of open-source (read: FREE) alternatives like Python, which is a language with far more reach and developer interest than MATLAB. Check out all these open-source Python libraries that replicate many features that are often used in scientific computing: https://scikits.appspot.com/scikits

 

Mathematica is interesting and fun to use, but for EEs, I don't see any compelling reason to suggest it over MATLAB+Python.

It may be different for EE but most for the most part when trying to find a job as an ME companies put alot of weight on someone who knows how to use MATLAB. I know a friend who ended up getting a job because he was able to talk about MATLAB when the interviewer asked about it. I would definitely agree that learning it would be highly beneficial to an EE major based on the jobs I've looked at that turned out to be EE jobs and not ME jobs.

[Ktk]

Yeah, I should make it clear that MATLAB is currently used more in the (non-software) engineering industry than Python esp. in larger firms, because it costs a lot of work-hours to move technologies from legacy apps, and retraining is costly!

[Pelop17]

On 12/2/2016 at 2:17 AM, Brooksie359 said:

It may be different for EE but most for the most part when trying to find a job as an ME companies put alot of weight on someone who knows how to use MATLAB. I know a friend who ended up getting a job because he was able to talk about MATLAB when the interviewer asked about it. I would definitely agree that learning it would be highly beneficial to an EE major based on the jobs I've looked at that turned out to be EE jobs and not ME jobs.

 

3 hours ago, Ktk said:

Yeah, I should make it clear that MATLAB is currently used more in the (non-software) engineering industry than Python esp. in larger firms, because it costs a lot of work-hours to move technologies from legacy apps, and retraining is costly!

 

On 12/2/2016 at 1:31 AM, Ktk said:

I've used mathematica a little for school, matlab a lot more (for academic research), and python even more than that (for web programming, data wrangling)

Python is certainly the most well-known language of the three in general, and MATLAB is not uncommon to see in EE. An EE company using Mathematica extensively would be quite rare.

 

You don't need any engineering knowledge to program in any of these languages. Look up some starting guides on them, they're not so scary once you get started! Just look 'em up. Matlab starter guide, for instance: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/learn_matlab/desktop.html

 

Octave is an open-source competitor regarding MATLAB. You may want to look at that if you want to get a feel for how MATLAB is like.

 

In EE, MATLAB is often used to simulate and test things. MATLAB+Simulink is a great way to (relatively simply) simulate environments computationally before starting to make a complicated physcial testing setup.

 

Some companies are moving away from MATLAB in favor of open-source (read: FREE) alternatives like Python, which is a language with far more reach and developer interest than MATLAB. Check out all these open-source Python libraries that replicate many features that are often used in scientific computing: https://scikits.appspot.com/scikits

 

Mathematica is interesting and fun to use, but for EEs, I don't see any compelling reason to suggest it over MATLAB+Python.

Thanks for making it clear to me

So basicly what I should learn is Python and Matlab to be able also to write it on my cv.

[Brooksie359]

6 hours ago, Ktk said:

Yeah, I should make it clear that MATLAB is currently used more in the (non-software) engineering industry than Python esp. in larger firms, because it costs a lot of work-hours to move technologies from legacy apps, and retraining is costly!

Yeah most EE jobs ask that you have some programming skills but mostly C++ from what I've seen. knowing python and other coding languages is definitely helpful to differentiate yourself from most EE applications. but this is mostly from a getting a job point of view. most likely if you get an EE degree you will also have learned C++ and some other programming languages as part of the required classes. so learning python might be extremely beneficial because it would be learning something that you won't have to learn anyways as a EE major. learning something like C++ might be helpful with going into a C++ class with some knowledge of the language already but this will mainly help with passing the class not furthering your qualifications as an EE once out of college.

[Pelop17]

18 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Yeah most EE jobs ask that you have some programming skills but mostly C++ from what I've seen. knowing python and other coding languages is definitely helpful to differentiate yourself from most EE applications. but this is mostly from a getting a job point of view. most likely if you get an EE degree you will also have learned C++ and some other programming languages as part of the required classes. so learning python might be extremely beneficial because it would be learning something that you won't have to learn anyways as a EE major. learning something like C++ might be helpful with going into a C++ class with some knowledge of the language already but this will mainly help with passing the class not furthering your qualifications as an EE once out of college.

I totally agree with you ... At school I have taken computer science and we are beginning with VB - which I totally disagree with my school learning  VB , I prefer learning Python instead . There in the Holidays I will put some effort in learning some python and VB . Especially in summer I will emphasise on learning python and C or Obj to be able to write even a small programme and publish it - to show to the uni that I indeed have some experience.

I have seen in my university page the cources and indeed C++ is the one they are focus on. There as you have said learning more programming language will definetly help you. As of Matlab I will might do an overview of it just to see how it works .

[Brooksie359]

7 minutes ago, Pelop17 said:

I totally agree with you ... At school I have taken computer science and we are beginning with VB - which I totally disagree with my school learning  VB , I prefer learning Python instead . There in the Holidays I will put some effort in learning some python and VB . Especially in summer I will emphasise on learning python and C or Obj to be able to write even a small programme and publish it - to show to the uni that I indeed have some experience.

I have seen in my university page the cources and indeed C++ is the one they are focus on. There as you have said learning more programming language will definetly help you. As of Matlab I will might do an overview of it just to see how it works .

Yeah matlab can be used alongside other programming languages which is why it is so useful. as for vb I would say alot of universities teach vb because it is a very simple programming language and is easy to learn. it also helps teach the basics of programming but after it is learned it seems to be less useful than some other languages. I have seen some companies say it is something they want in an applicant I haven't seen any require it though.

[Pelop17]

4 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Yeah matlab can be used alongside other programming languages which is why it is so useful. as for vb I would say alot of universities teach vb because it is a very simple programming language and is easy to learn. it also helps teach the basics of programming but after it is learned it seems to be less useful than some other languages. I have seen some companies say it is something they want in an applicant I haven't seen any require it though.

Thanks for the information on that. So , now that I put more thinking in my thought . I would say that during the holidays is better to learn C rather than python since most of my uni courses are based on C programming. On my resume would it make any difference if instead of learning C , I learn Obj-C since I want to become an apple developer ?

[Brooksie359]

4 minutes ago, Pelop17 said:

Thanks for the information on that. So , now that I put more thinking in my thought . I would say that during the holidays is better to learn C rather than python since most of my uni courses are based on C programming. On my resume would it make any difference if instead of learning C , I learn Obj-C since I want to become an apple developer ?

If it's more applicable to the job you are trying to get then yes. 

[Pelop17]

4 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

If it's more applicable to the job you are trying to get then yes. 

The point is that I dont know , but what I beleive it would not matter since learning obj-c will be learnign C with just some changes in the commands and the strucure of the compiler

[Brooksie359]

2 minutes ago, Pelop17 said:

The point is that I dont know , but what I beleive it would not matter since learning obj-c will be learnign C with just some changes in the commands and the strucure of the compiler

I'd love to say I know the answer but as I am a mechanical engineer who happens to like the EE side of mechanical engineering I don't know a lot about programming outside of the field of controls. 

[Pelop17]

3 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

I'd love to say I know the answer but as I am a mechanical engineer who happens to like the EE side of mechanical engineering I don't know a lot about programming outside of the field of controls. 

Never mind I will figure it out . Thanks anyway for the overall help, I am glad that this forum always have the answers , i need haha

[Brooksie359]

10 minutes ago, Pelop17 said:

Never mind I will figure it out . Thanks anyway for the overall help, I am glad that this forum always have the answers , i need haha

I'm glad I could help with my limited EE knowledge.