Re: How does Octave shine?

[Cameron Laird]

On Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 04:40:14PM -0400, Alexander Barth wrote:
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                [several helpful points]
                        .
                        .
> With octave, I am sure that the code that I write today can still be used in, 
> say, 10 years. Not all
> institution use matlab, some maybe use IDL or something else. It is not 
> uncommon for scientists to
> change institution and they are expected to bring their expertise (including 
> code) to the new
> institution.
> 
> And, as mentioned previously, open-source fosters scientific collaboration 
> while the dependence on
> proprietary software impedes it. A crucial characteristic of scientific 
> results is the ability of
> other to reproduce them. This aspect is partially lost in the case of 
> proprietary software.
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                        .
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I couldn't agree more.  *I* promote these ideas at every
opportunity, and think they're worth repeating again in
this thread.

It's the more technical observations that have most helped
me this week, though, as the audience for this demonstration
seems immune to our arguments about scientific method,
portability, and so on.  My thanks for all your remarks.