[dr_kiszonka]

Interesting. I have always felt I am missing out on not using tools like Mathematica or MatLab. I see some people doing everything using MatLab, including building GUI and DL models, which I found surprising for a single software suite, and - nowadays - one that is quite affordable (at least the home edition).

Mathematica seems a little pricey but maybe it would motivate me to learn more math.

I would love to read what non-mathematicians use MatLab, Mathematica, and Maple for.

[azeemba]

Matlab and Mathematica are VERY different.

Matlab and Python are in the same ballpark. Easy syntax and large standard library. Matlab provides a lot more dedicated libraries for niche areas but the overall experience feels the same.

Mathematica doesn't really have a standard counterpart. Jupyter notebooks try to capture the experience but the support for symbolic expressions makes the Mathematica experience very different.

[rcxdude]

Matlab is fundamentally not a great language. It's not great at interacting with data that isn't already blocks of numbers, it's terrible for UI design, and even for matrix manipulation numpy is beating it nowadays. The main reason to use it is if you really need something in one of the toolboxes that doesn't have an open-source equivalent, or for Simulink. As a general data processing language it's far from the best default.

[redfloatplane]

I'm a non-mathematician and I used it for lots of novel stuff - GIS, visualisations of all kinds, machine learning. The Wolfram Community staff picks is a great introduction into the varied things you can do: https://community.wolfram.com/content?curTag=staff%20picks

[3abiton]

To be fair it was used a lot during my physics studies. I opted to use it afterwards for integrals and derivations, very powerful.

[auxiliarymoose]

Yeah, I was one of those schmucks that used sympy / python instead of mathematica in my physics coursework. Policy was "mathematica is recommended and supported, but you can bring your own tools if you want to and can make them work."

In retrospect, doing the work in mathematica would have probably stretched my brain more (in a good way!) since it provides a different and powerful way of solving problems vs other languages...maybe I'll have to revisit it. Perhaps even try advent of code with it?

While python did get the job done, it feels like the ceiling (especially for power users) is so much higher in mathematica.

[plomme]

MatLab was taught and used extensively at my university, and has many strong sides and a fantastic standard library. We used it mainly for physics and robotics calculations. The licenses are (were?) prohibitively expensive outside of academia though. Hard to compete with free Python + NumPy and a larger talent pool.

[Keyframe]

I used mathematica for real last time in SGI days and loved it. I know probably a ton has changed since, but I do have to ask those that use it today if you'd still use it for non math-heavy (and even so) tasks if you have access to the wonderful world of python and jupyter / polars, R, and similar?

[gucci-on-fleek]

Mathematica is awesome for weird, one-off tasks in fields that I'm unfamiliar with, since the documentation is excellent, and the functionality is really broad (so I don't need to figure out how to install a specialty program for every one-off task). But for fields that I'm experienced with or tasks that I'm planning on running frequently, I'll usually just use Python, since most of the Python libraries have more functionality and run quicker than Mathematica.

(Mathematica is of course much better than Python at symbolic math, but this isn't what you are asking about)