Comment by JoshGG

21 hours ago

MATLAB is an array language.

Yeah - IDK why it never makes it to these lists. R too. Matlab being 2D matrix first/default gets it right for me there. IK matrices trivially translate to arrays, still: find 2D to be extra expressive on human level, for zero price paid. I get it it's all the same to the cpu. 2D rows-columns rectangle of data being the simplest data structure both necessary and sufficient covering a 1) matrix 2) spreadsheet 3) SQL table 4) directed graph of nodes and edges. (in the past I've read someplace that lists are for pie eaters, but wouldn't know myself

MATLAB doesn't even have 1-d arrays, it really is missing the principled and composable operations that make array languages useful

  • I believe the ArrayCast had this debate on whether it's considered an arraylang when they had some of the MATLAB devs on.

    The determination they came to was that MATLAB is an array lang but not an iversonian array lang.

MATLAB doesn't have a FOSS implementation that runs in a browser.

  • Octave covers all the Matlab functionality I need, not sure if it runs in a browser. I mean if you have the source code for something there must be some way to get it to run in a browser these days, right?