I believe the only reasons MATLAB persists are Simulink and a C code generation engine that outputs embeddable code that conforms to some regulation or other in the engineering world. Does gnu octave have similar features? I’ve spent a while looking fruitlessly for python-based alternatives…
“Lapel” was an interesting find. That and “development” really hammered in the importance of accentuation. I’m still unsure of what I want to do with “schedule”. “Burger” sometimes sounds off when I say it.
They’re not entirely wrong, of course, but they’re really stretching this simple stereotype into some deep difference in psychologies and assigning it to this “concept of a marketplace of idea vs. rationality and enlightenment” oversimplification.
Honestly, as a European person who’s been through bits of both school systems, it mainly sound like an uninformed rant from an American who’s angry with the state of the US and who’s completely idealized Europe as a result – even though their only vista into EU cultures is a bunch of titles of unread articles from the part of the US media they most agree with.
Which would be fine if they hadn’t worded what amounts to an overindulged shower thought in such a peremptory fashion.
Basically they behaved like their own stereotype of “american psychology”, which we do have quite enough of at home thank you very much.
It looks like the blowback is less about one side beinng better or worse than the other, and more about this whole thesis sounding like the most obnoxious fourteen year old you’ve ever met larping as a sociologist with zero substantiation to their sweeping statements
That it’s pretty shit from the bottom up. Boring Lagrangian giving rise through great efforts of complexity to an endless dead void. On a mote of dust somewhere, there’s a soup of unusual chemicals making short lived bubbles of flesh that are compelled to eat each other for survival. Some of them organized into a System; it’s bad. It can change for the better or the worse, in increments, if enormous emergent collective efforts are made. On the individual level, though, existence is either painful or less painful but more boring if you’re lucky. But generally you don’t think about it and just kill time waiting for death.
Coming from a more science/engineering background than a cs/programming one and having tried both, I wholeheartedly disagree. Or at least it’s a higher floor and lower ceiling situation.
And from an engineering industry standpoint the transition cost (or at least compatibility) from generated C, and the lack of a simulink-like block implementation/visualization and code generation pipeline still make it a hard sell. The block thing isn’t just for comfort in those circles, it’s to do with industry standards for system definitions and representation.
Don’t get me wrong I wish Rust changed that game: I hate MATLAB with a passion; I’m just pessimistic.