The fabled "Matlab compatibility"

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 8 November 2012 13:51, Israel Herraiz <address@hidden> wrote:
> What I meant is that I use Octave options that makes it (Octave) more
> compatible with MATLAB (--traditional).

The --braindead option, aliased to --traditional, doesn't actually
affect anything I would call "compatibility". It only affects
superficial things about appearance like what the prompt looks like. I
consider "Matlab compatbility" to mean "Matlab code should run in
Octave". Merely this and nothing more. In particular, making the GUI
look exactly like Matlab is not a goal, especially not now that
Matlab's GUI got a ribbon.

Octave is not meant to be "a Matlab clone", nor is it meant to be
"Matlab but without the price tag". Your students already know where
to get Matlab without the price tag. I doubt you will agree with me,
but I invite to show your students the improvements that Octave has
over the Matlab language. If you just show it to them as "Matlab
clone", they will not value it and will wonder what advantage does
this have over the Matlab without the price tag that they already
have, other than some vague abstraction about "nobody is telling me
that downloading this is illegal or immoral".

And you should ultimately show them the strongest benefits of Octave.
Sooner or later, most students want to know what is the backslash
operator doing. Show them, I say.

- Jordi G. H.