[Scilab-users] Matlab vs Scilab perf

[Pierre Vuillemin]

My 2 cents,

I think that the main advantage of Scilab/Octave/Matlab in comparison to 
other environments is that they gather various tools in a (somewhat) 
coherent bundle. I think that most users won't need to look for another 
library to do what they want as the most common features are already in 
the environment.

Python does it too with Scipy, but in some domains (e.g. control theory, 
simulink), the features offered by python are far behind what can be 
done in Matlab (and to a lesser extent in Scilab).
Besides, Python being a general programming language, some operations 
feels less natural than with Scilab/Octave/Matlab. For instance, I feel 
that linear algebra quickly becomes unreadable in Python: A*B*C becoming 
A.dot(B.dot(C)) or A @ B @ C ....
Conversely, Python outshines Scilab/Octave/Matlab in many other areas.

Concerning speed, while I agree that this is often not that important, 
the Julia Language has demonstrated that it is not necessarily 
unreachable for a "high level language". I guess it mainly relies on the 
performance of the JIT compiler at some point.
I remember reading that Scilab 6 should have a JIT compiler, but I might 
be mistaken?

Also, I am not convinced that Scilab/Octave/Matlab are limited only to 
prototype small algorithms/projects. The main reason being that a lot of 
people won't port their codes to a compiled language because it 
represents way to much work...

Pierre

Le 02/03/2017 à 19:55, Amanda Osvaldo a écrit :
> But professor Ricardo.
>
> If it's possible to do the same with python, including the GUI, 
> considering the technical issues about hardware consumption and 
> scalability. So why to use MatLab, SciLAB or even Octave?
>
> It's not smarter to do all in python and finish the prototype and the 
> "main project" with almost half of time and effort?
>
> -- Amanda Osvaldo
>
> On Thu, 2017-03-02 at 15:33 -0300, Ricardo Fabbri wrote:
>> Speaking from experience:
>>
>> It is worth mentioning that in many ways performance is not critical
>> for a "lab" language like Scilab or Matlab. It is just an extremely
>> simple language to test concepts and algorithms at a very small scale
>> of granularity. The real crucial factor for Scilab or Matlab is the
>> GUI for exploring data and developing algorithms interactively. Once
>> you have a working solution, you'll fit it inside a bigger and more
>> relevant
>> system by porting promptly to a language like C++ for scalability and speed.
>>
>> Just use Scilab for what its worth, don't obsess with speed, even
>> though it is important.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> --
>> Dr Ricardo Fabbri
>> Professor of Computer Engineering
>> GNU/Linux registered user #175401
>> pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPRJ
>> labmacambira.sf.net
>> rfabbri.github.io
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 2:00 PM, Samuel Gougeon <sgougeon at free.fr <mailto:sgougeon at free.fr>> wrote:
>>> Le 02/03/2017 à 16:29, Michael Benguigui a écrit : Hi all, As a 
>>> Scilab user, I am currently fighting to reach Matlab performance..My 
>>> current scilab program takes 4x more than my matlab's vesion. Here 
>>> are some instructions requiring some optimizations.. If you have an 
>>> idea... thanks a lot! All times are cumulative times after the 
>>> execution (iterations) I used the Matlab and Scilab profilers 
>>> Congratulations for using the new Scilab profiler :) Could you post 
>>> please the file of results? It is indeed hard to answer without 
>>> having more information either on a runnable part of your code, or 
>>> about results you got with the profiler. Regards Samuel 
>>> _______________________________________________ users mailing list 
>>> users at lists.scilab.org <mailto:users at lists.scilab.org> 
>>> http://lists.scilab.org/mailman/listinfo/users 
>>
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