MATLAB vs. Python
In this tutorial, we will discuss the difference between MATLAB and Python. Both technologies are leading in the scientific fields. Python is the most popular, widely used language where MATLAB is a leading language in mathematics. In the current world, we are getting to be more logical and measurements. That’s why logical computing emerges over the other approach.
Let’s have a brief introduction to MATLAB.
MATLAB
MATLAB is a commercial numeric computing environment and programming language. It is the easiest and productive environment for engineers and scientists and is completely dedicated to mathematical operations and technical computing. It provides advanced toolboxes such as Digital Signal Processing, Image processing, control design, etc.
Cleve Moler developed it in late 1970. Some scientists consider it as a successor of FORTRAN. MATLAB can create graphic illustrations.
Advantages of MATLAB
MATLAB provides many useful features to user, but here we will explain some key features.
- It consists of many useful built-in functions.
- It saves time and costs.
- It is not just a programming language but also a programming interface.
- Provides full features for iterative exploration and problem solving within the Desktop environment.
- Provides built in graphic so that programmer can easily plot the custom graph and tools.
- High-level language specially intended for engineering and scientific computing.
- It provides an interface to work with other programming languages like C, C++, Java, .NET, Python, SQL, Hadoop, etc.
- It provides much productivity. For example – When we prepare the data for analysis and waste most of our time preparing manually. With the help of MATLAB, we can automate the collection and preparation of data. We can also reduce the time and accuracy.
- MATLAB provides effective garbage collection and multi-threaded support.
Disadvantages of MATLAB
It comes with some shortcomings due to commercial nature. The disadvantages are given below.
- It isn’t easy to extend the functionality through third parties due to its proprietary nature.
- It is less expressive language.
- It is quite expensive, which means code written in MATLAB can only be used the other person has a license.
- In MATLAB, the indexing is done using braces rather than brackets, making it hard to differentiate it from a function call.
- There is no real-time support in MATLAB.
- Using MATLAB, we cannot create stand-alone applications.
- It isn’t easy to integrate with another language.
Python
Python is general-purpose, high-level, user-friendly, and open-source programming language. Python is a platform independent language which means it can run on any platform. It provides the easy-syntax and widely used language.
Python is one of the most leading programming languages and used in every technology domain such as machine learning, artificial Intelligence, web application, and gaming. It takes less lines of code other than the other programming languages such as java and C++ to perform any tasks. Python is composed in convenient ANSI C.
Advantages of Python
Python has many advantages over the other programming languages and that are the reason of popularity of Python. Let’s see some advantages of Python as follows.
- Easy to use and easy to learn.
- Highly portable, which means it can run on any platform -High-end servers and workstations.
- It is an extensible and open-source language.
- No use of curly braces to define block code.
- A large set of built-in libraries.
- It was mainly designed to work with data science.
- Provide easy interaction with the other programming language such as R, C++, etc.
Disadvantages of Python
There is another site of a picture; Python also consists of some disadvantages which are as follows.
- Python is an interpreted language, and therefore it executes the code much slowly.
- Python is not suitable for mobile app development.
- It consumes a lot of memory.
- Python has a limitation with database access.
- Python is a dynamically typed language, and that’s why it shows the error at the runtime.
- Immature trading packages.
Difference between MATLAB vs. Python
Below are the important difference between Python and MATLAB.
| Sr. No |
Python |
MATLAB |
| 1. |
Python is a general-purpose, user-friendly programming language which is developed in portable in ANSI C. |
MALTAB is a language as well as commercial numeric computing environment. |
| 2. |
Python comes with the most important libraries: numpy, scipy, pyOpenGI, matplotlib, visvis, pygame, etc. |
MATLAB comes with an advanced toolkit like image processing, statistics, optimization, etc. |
| 3. |
It provides real-time support. |
It doesn’t provide real-time support. |
| 4. |
Python has the several built-in data types that can be used to accomplish number of tasks. |
MATLAB is an array-focused language. It treats most data types as array of some array. |
| 5. |
Python has excellent community support across the world. |
MATLAB doesn’t have supportive community as Python. |
| 6. |
It includes a broad standard library. |
It doesn’t contain bland programming functionality. |
| 7. |
In terms of performance, Python is much efficient to perform a task. It is more expressive and readable programming language. |
MATLAB is a less expressive and less efficient language than the Python. But it provides more readable graphical capabilities than Python. |
| 8. |
Python works on the 0-based indexing which means an array or list indexing starts from the 0. |
On the other hand, MATLAB supports the one-based indexing which is quit helpful in vectors and matrices. |
| 9. |
Python offers us completely open environment so that anyone can use and contribute it. |
MATLAB is specially designed for numerical investigation, graphical visualization, etc. |
| 10. |
Python has a stunning iterative loop structure. |
MATLAB has the worst iterative loop structure. |
Conclusion
We have got the idea about both languages. We have discussed the basic concept of Python and MATLAB. Both programming languages can be used in the scientific and engineering field. MATLAB is designed to perform mathematical computation where Python has a crucial role in the data science field.
We have explored the advantages and disadvantages of both programming languages. Python is popular for its vast built-in libraries and more readable. However, we talk about the complex MATLAB is more convenient than Python.
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