Re: Octave download statistics

[Michael Creel]

<sorry Brian for the double send, I' m a little google mail challenged.>

Maybe someone should write a "phonehome" script that detects whether
or not .octaverc exists and gives the user the option to report use of
octave to some database. I would bet that at _least_ 1e6 people have
seen the octave:x> prompt at some point. One of the challenges of the
free software model is to convince the politicians that they should
support it.  That's hard to do unless you can convince them that this
stuff is used. I think that RedHat is considering something like this.
M.

free software - it's good for you, trust me.

On 12/14/06, J. Brian Adams <address@hidden> wrote:
> I have been using it in two undergraduate classes; computational
> mathematics and computational probability and simulation.  My goal
> has been to avoid canned packages and require the students to write
> the algorithms themselves.  Further, I do not want these courses to
> become followups of programming in Java or C++, especially since they
> are open to (and the majority of registrants are) non-CS students.  I
> have found that Octave provides a simple language that is
> understandable to both the computer science students and the non-
> computer science students alike.
>
> Of course it is not without its difficulties.  The single recurring
> problem is an objection to using it by a minority of the CS
> students.  Although they have never used it before, for some reason
> they immediately consider it a toy language and thus do not want to
> be bothered learning it.  Most do though, and of those, several have
> commented about being glad to be able use it in other classes and
> even later when they begin research in graduate school.
>
>
> On Dec 13, 2006, at 10:28 PM, Tom Holroyd wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 13 Dec 2006, J. Brian Adams wrote:
> >> I use Octave in my classes.  To simplify the whole process I create a
> >> CD with binary distributions of Octave and gnuplot and an install
> >> script that I wrote.
> >
> > Hi Brian. What sort of classes do you teach?
> >
> > Tom Holroyd, Ph.D.
> > We experience the world not as it is, but as we expect it to be.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Help-octave mailing list
> > address@hidden
> > https://www.cae.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/help-octave
>
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