From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-10-17T15:06:53+09:00
Subject: Re: mathematics and physics

Joel VanderWerf wrote:
> Jason Bornhoft wrote:
> ...
>> Personally, I would like to see Ruby go as far as LAPACK or BLAS.
> 
> ...and evolve into a credible replacement for MATLAB/Simulink/Stateflow, 
> as well. Why not.
> 

Lots of folks would like to "replace" MATLAB. I don't think Ruby and 
MATLAB have a heck of a lot in common. And there are lots of open source 
math packages, both numeric and symbolic. I personally prefer doing math 
in a higher-level language than Ruby, such as R or Axiom.

In any event, I don't think the horse to beat is MATLAB any more, but 
Mathematica. MATLAB is really a numeric processing package -- it's 
popular in signal and image processing, but there are better tools for 
just about everything else these days. Mathematica, on the other hand, 
is a really first-rate hunk of code. I've never bought a license for it 
-- I don't do enough symbolic math in my day job to justify the cost and 
at home, I'd rather play with open source. :)