Philosophical differences 🔗Īlmost every main difference between MATLAB versus Python comes down to this simple fact: MATLAB is proprietary and Python is not. You don’t need much of a programming background to get started with MATLAB it’s a fairly intuitive language. Its main pro? It doesn’t take a pro to use it. It was created in the 1970s as a teaching tool for students at University of New Mexico. It has its roots in colleges and universities, and that’s where you’re likely to find most MATLAB users today. It’s a high-level programming language normally used for numerical computing, data analysis, and visualization. Unlike Python, MATLAB code is proprietary, which means it’s owned and licensed by someone else for money. Its hallmarks? Python is simple, readable, and easy to use, all with beautifully elegany syntax. Companies use Python for web development, data science, scientific computing, artificial intelligence, computer science, and more as developers create more libraries and functionalities. It’s good for simple tasks that beginners might be interested in, and complex tasks that organizations might want. It’s got a huge and growing functionality. It consistently ranks as one of the most popular languages today. Ever since its inception, Python has only grown more popular. Python was ideated in the late 1980s and was first implemented in December 1989 by Guido van Rossum, Python’s ex Benevolent Dictator for Life. This is one of the major advantages of Python programming over Matlab.

Because it’s open-source, anybody can access it, dig around in the guts to see how it works, and even create their own packages for it. Python is an open source programming language used for just about everything. History and definitions 🔗īefore we dig into which language is best, it’s worth looking at some historical context. Let’s take a deeper look comparing Python vs MATLAB so you are finally persuaded. But you’re searching for the differences between MATLAB and Python, so clearly you’re not convinced.

Python is better than MATLAB in (almost) every situation. This is one of those arguments where, outside of a few very specific examples, there’s a clear answer.

Matlab vs python numpy