Inquiry Into Octave

[Brandon Morrison]

To Whom It May Concern,

     MATLAB is obviously well used in industry.  I would rather use
free, open-source versions; however, a good amount of the arguments do
not seem compatible with MATLAB.  Also, lots of the IDE programs for
Octave either seem to be stalled or dead.  Having said this, is there an
active effort to better reproduce the syntax of MATLAB in Octave and
perhaps bundle it in an IDE?  I ask this because it almost seems like a
waste of time to learn Octave if the vast majority of researchers and
institutions use MATLAB.  I should then learn MATLAB and ignore Octave,
or so this appears.  Furthermore, reproduction of the syntax would
better enable people to convert to Octave in the future, i.e. no
learning curve.  I appreciate your time.

-Brandon Morrison