CHE 572 - Resources


In the courses that the Faculty of Engineering offers, which involve computation, we tend to focus on MATLAB. There are many alternatives to MATLAB and some of these are superior alternatives for specific tasks. A good number of the alternatives are Open Source and as a result are free for your use. It is worth investing some of your time to see just what software is available in through the Open Source community.
 
  Some things that I think may be of value to you are:

  • Matlab alternatives - numerical computing,
    1. href="http://www.scilab.org/">Scilab - I like this one and use it more often than Matlab for numerical calculations. It has all of the functionality that I need and includes a Simulink alternative.There are not as many specialised toolboxes available, but you may find everything you need as user contributions.
    2. Octave
    3. FreeMat
    4. MATRIXx - this was free for our use at one time, but may not be since National Instruments took it over.
  • Matlab alternatives - symbolic and numerical computing
    1. Sage - I have been experimenting with this and it looks interesting. The download is quite large.
    2. Maxima
    3. OpenAxiom
    4. Maple - Unfortunately you must buy this software. It is inexpensive, while you are a student. I use Maple for all of my symbolic computing. The software was created in Canada and the company is a real Canadian success story.
    5. Mathematica - In the US, and to a growing degree in Canada, this is considered to be the premier computing environment. It has many features and a considerable price tag. For my purposes, it is equivalent to Maple.
  • Targeted programming languages / environments,
    1. Python (NumPy + SciPy) - This is an incredibly powerful computing environment. The Python language is interpreted, which means that you can use it like MATLAB, but you have access to a much larger set of tools than are available in any one piece of software. In fact, Python is a scripting language that you can use to "glue" together pieces of software and code to produce a custom package to meet your personal needs. As an example of its power, Sage is written in Python