Octave is hampered by the fact that it's still basically the same language as MATLAB without any of the reasons you put up with using MATLAB (the toolboxes).
While the language definitely has it's problems (I'm not a fan of the syntax at all), I think dropping it for something marginally better like R is a little silly. So many man hours have been put into writing MATLAB/Octave code - redoing it seems like mostly a waste.
I don't know if you have similar experiences, but I often find that I want to use X feature in MATLAB in combination with Y feature in R and there isn't any easy way to do it. The bifurcation of coding efforts is vastly more frustrating than some bad/inconsistent syntax.
The toolboxes are great. I haven't used them much, but I feel like a lot of the time you can get away without using them. If you really need them, then it's not unreasonable to pay a license for the documentation and robustness - which you won't get in open source most of the time.
rcxdude|12 years ago
bambam12897|12 years ago
I don't know if you have similar experiences, but I often find that I want to use X feature in MATLAB in combination with Y feature in R and there isn't any easy way to do it. The bifurcation of coding efforts is vastly more frustrating than some bad/inconsistent syntax.
The toolboxes are great. I haven't used them much, but I feel like a lot of the time you can get away without using them. If you really need them, then it's not unreasonable to pay a license for the documentation and robustness - which you won't get in open source most of the time.
But like.. that's just my opinion man =)
sjtrny|12 years ago