Re: About Octave

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 8/7/12 11:26 AM, Andrew Y. Ng wrote:
> I'd like to introduce our Director of Engineering Jiquan Ngiam, who
> had developed the Octave submission script.

Hello, Jiquan. I actually remember quickly browsing your script when I
took the first ML class in fall of 2011. Is it still being used?

> Several of our classes use Octave, so we would indeed be interested
> in exploring if there's any closer/better integration that would
> make sense. I hope that you and Ngiam can connect!

Jiquan, let me point you to one of the original requests I sent for
better communication:

    
http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Can-we-work-together-to-improve-Octave-td4631905.html

The issue we want to work with is when people say Octave sucks or when
they fix Octave but we never know about it. I would like you to
encourage Coursera students to directly talk to us in Octave if they
are facing problems, in mailing lists or the bug tracker, or at least
to funnel to us the frustrations they may experience with Octave. For
the first ML class, I was in the forums doing this myself to some
extent. We squashed one such Octave bug this way (about scatter3 in
version 3.4.3, IIRC), and I think it's helpful for everyone overall if
we keep the channels of communication open.

And I really do mean open. Notice how I'm CC'ing the public
Octave maintainers' list here.

I understand if Octave development isn't your primary concern and you
don't want to follow the maintainers' list or our bug tracker. If you
prefer to only talk to me directly, that's fine. I think, however, it
would be better for everyone involved if we keep the talk as public as
possible and involve everyone.

Thanks,
- Jordi G. H.