[Python or Matlab] What's better for scientific calculation?

Question

Hi. Beginner here. I'm looking for numerical computation tool (Materials Science). What's better for a newbie programmer.

Priorities-
1) Ease of learning.
2) Speed of computation (PDEs)
3) Other benefits

Thanks and regards.

Answer 1

Python has many numerical and scientific oriented libraries that make it comparable to Matlab, so:

1) Python is easy to learn (but Matlab isn't that harder)
2) For the speed I don't know
3) For other benefits:
- Python is free while Matlab costs a lot
- Python has symbolic calculus libraries like sympy that allow you to obtain primitives and derivatives formulas, while Matlab is parametric (only allows you to calculate them in a certain point or in an interval)

- BUT Matlab has simulink while Python, obviously, doesn't

For other informations you can look here: https://www.python-course.eu/numerical_programming_with_python.php

Answer 2

I think Python is better than others for scientific calculation.

Answer 3

I forgot: the Python's library matplotlib allows you to plot graphs in XKCD style. 😀

Answer 4

Thank you all for your input. I appreciate it.

Answer 5

You can use both because Matlab and Python have the same structure. But Python is free and for Matlab you have to pay a license. I recommend Python. For the rapidity it's depend on the manner you do code. You can use the power of the vectorization and avoid loops.