[clug] matlab alternatives

[Geoff Swan]

I fall back on python most often these days (pylab, scipy, pandas, numpy
etc). But I can vouch for scilab too. Another one I've looked at is maxima.
Python notebook deserves special mention; alternatively if you like emacs,
look at org-mode and source blocks. Both these tools become particularly
useful in the reproducible research areas. Org-mode is not as easy to dive
into but has not options for publishing and allows you to pass data between
code blocks that don't have to be the same language. Eg pass the output of
an R statistics calculation to a python code block.

It's worth looking at a few different options as there is a lot of very
powerful tools and libraries available. My reason for using python
specifically is it is my go to tool for pretty much anything that lends
itself to scripting.