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Re: Question on performance, coding style and competitive software


From: David Bateman
Subject: Re: Question on performance, coding style and competitive software
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:46:53 +0200
User-agent: Mozilla-Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (X11/20090103)

Alois Schlögl wrote:
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John W. Eaton wrote:
On 22-Apr-2009, Alois Schlögl wrote:

| (The programm slowed down on Matlab from 13.0 to 66.15 s, though).

If you care about this, then I guess you should complain to the
MathWorks about the performance of their product...

| BTW, what are the arguments in favor of using octave-only coding style ?

Some of us like it better.  Using endfor, endif, etc. is easier to
read.


The indentation is the most important to make readable code, the use of
endfor, endif etc. is hardly decisive.


| Yes, the question is closely related to the previous one. Of course, if
| the toolbox is compatible to matlab, there is no problem for the matlab
| users. Unfortunately, most toolboxes (all in Octave and
| octave-forge/main and most of octave-forge/extra) are using the
| octave-only coding style.
| | This seems to suggest that a fork is neccessary in order to make the
| toolboxes applicable for matlab users. Is there an alternative ?

Some of us don't see enhancing Matlab as a goal of the Octave or
Octave Forge projects.  The goal for us is to make Octave better by
writing code for Octave, not Matlab.  Making useful things available
in Octave packages should provide an incentive to use Octave.

jwe


I agree that making useful things available for Octave is an incentive
to use Octave; however, i do not see how writing octave-only code is
decisive for this aim.

On the other hand, writing mat-compatible functions can win users for
the tools and toolboxes (even if they still prefer the proprietary
engine). This could also bring in some additional testers for the
toolboxes. It might be also a way to raise the interest of some current
mat-users and developers. I think it would be a win for (the idea of)
Octave.

When I tried using a function name of a function in matlab that was in a toolbox as well and I didn't have a license for this toolbox matlab's license manager prevented me from using that function even if all the code in it was mine.. Perhaps matlab's license manager has improved but if it hasn't your idea of getting matlab users to use matlab compatible octave-forge toolboxes might be dead in the water.. Frankly I always considered this behavior of matlab's a bug as I see no reason I should avoid an arbitrary and growing list of function names

D.

D.

--
David Bateman                                address@hidden
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92100 Boulogne-Billancourt FRANCE            +33 6 72 01 06 33 (Mob)



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