Python for Decision Makers and Business Leaders Transcripts
Chapter: Python vs.
Lecture: Python vs. MATLAB
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0:00
Python vs Matlab.
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This is mostly applicable if you're doing data science
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scientific computing, data visualization, things like that.
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So, let's put them side by side. Is Matlab open source?
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No way, no it is not. And Python, yes of course.
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Is it compiled? No, these are not compiled.
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Is it owned by a company?
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Yes, Matlab is owned by a commercial identity
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and Python is not. Do they have base-class libraries?
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Yeah, Matlab actually has super good base-class libraries.
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That's one of it's features, it gives you all these
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libraries to do scientific computing and mathematical stuff.
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Web capabilities? No.
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It's not for that, and Python, it's very strong.
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Database capabilities? Not really.
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Not in a general sense.
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Though, yeah, Python's very strong.
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Mobile app capabilities? No.
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Python is poor, but I believe Matlab is even worse.
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Desktop capabilities? No, not really.
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I know you can certainly automate Matlab
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but when you distribute it you have to buy licenses
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to Matlab and other funkiness
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so, I'm going to say no there.
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And again, Python does not win this super well.
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They have Qt and a few other things
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WX python, for example
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but it wins in this competition here.
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Stack Overflow rank?
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Matlab does not appear on the list.
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I'm sure there are questions about Matlab
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on Stack Overflow but far as the analytics
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I'm going to put negative infinity here
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vs. the number 1 position.
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That's a big difference.
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TOB rank? Matlab doesn't appear there either.
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Even though there is a programming language there.
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Price? The price for Matlab is non-trivial.
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This is $860 per user, per year, in perpetuity.
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It goes on and on.
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So, you can actually buy a license for something
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like three times that, and it will give you a
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permanent license forever, all of those are infinitely more
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than free and this one is a huge, huge
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importance distinction, is Matlab a general purpose
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programming language?
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No, it's not a general programming language you can't build
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arbitrary things can you go build YouTube with it?
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No! Would you ever try to build Microsoft Word with Matlab
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No, that would be insane you can not do it.
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It's not built for that, why is that important?
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Because if you start doing you're analysis in your work
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in something that is not a general purpose language
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Matlab or Julia whatever, stay focused on Matlab, we
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build something in Matlab and we get it working
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and it's like ah this is really cool, couldn't we turn this
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into a great website or a cool product or, integrate this
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into our other thing? The answer very likely is no you can't.
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Because Matlab doesn't do that broader thing where as with
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Python, if you start building up your Jupiter notebooks
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and get some analysis going and then it's super easy to
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productionize that and put that into a service or package it
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up into an application, because you know what?
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Python does those things but this is a big
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big point about this general purpose programming language
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and, I think it's really important in the consideration
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you're making and then we have the scientific
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compunioun level, I'm tempted to put Matlab under very
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strong and Python also under very strong.
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But why didn't I give Matlab as high of a score?
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If I had unlimited money, I'd believe they would be on par.
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But in order to do the extra stuff outside of the box
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of Matlab. What you do is you go and buy these tool boxes, you want
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to do wavelit decomposition?
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Cool that's a $1000 dollars per user, per year to add
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that feature to Matlab, where as with Python
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that's just another free thing you get
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off pipeei if you had unlimited money, I think their very
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much on par with each other, but because they go outside
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the box in Matlab you have to buy additional things
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and those are extremely non-trivial prices, I think that
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kind of takes a little bit away from the broad capabilities
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of Matlab. So, at least at the base level let's say Python and Winscp
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my interpretation is that it wins because you can go get all
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these other libraries like astropy and so on.