Re: struct weirdness

[Robert T. Short]

On 08/26/2012 07:51 AM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> > "Octave's intended audience generally are people who don't know any other 
> > programming language" -
> > what, people doing scientific computations are computer languages illiterate ?
> Usually, yes. They say themselves "I am not a programmer, I am a just
> physicist/chemist/economist." They call it "codes" instead of code,
> because they are unfamiliar with how source code is treated as a mass
> noun by programmers, not a count noun. They are unfamiliar with
> practices such as namespaces and error checking. Octave is meant for
> people who know how to do computations but are unfamiliar with
> software development. Those who know software development and can
> recognise a better language are already using R or Python or Julia.
This is a little harsh.  Speaking for myself and many of my colleagues, 
MATLAB/octave is NOT the current tool of choice, but MATLAB has created 
an environment that we are stuck with.  Just like Microsoft Word, it is 
a substandard tool but since clients and colleagues use such things to 
the exclusion of others even folks that understand are stuck.  When you 
add 20+ years of tool development it is really difficult to move onward.

Bob