what advantages MATLAB has over SCILAB and vice versa?

matlab scilab
Alan_AI picture Alan_AI · Feb 9, 2010 · Viewed 7.2k times · Source

i'm a computer systems engineering undergraduate student, i just want to know what advantages MATLAB has over SCILAB and vice versa other than that SCILAB is freeware. i mean from a computer engineer point of view.

thanks

Answer

Kena picture Kena · Feb 9, 2010

I can't get into the nitty-gritty details, as I haven't used SCILAB extensively.

But from a bird's eye view, MATLAB is a very polished software, with decades of development behind it. And a price to match. It has a huge array of specialized packages, good support, a reasonably well designed UI, and it's generally user-friendly enough for non-computer engineers to work with. It's also very common in the industry, so it's not a bad thing to have on your resume.

But if you don't have very complex needs (which I suspect, given the use I made of MATLAB during my undergrad years) and you don't need the robustness and polish of a professional package, SCILAB will probably meet your needs.

And since it's based on the MATLAB language, what you'll learn can be transferred later on if your needs change, or you find yourself working in an environment where MATLAB is the default.

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