My introductory linear algebra(math department, not C"S", enginqueering...

My introductory linear algebra(math department, not C"S", enginqueering, or the likes) professor says we will "be using python to do calculations." Is this a bad sign? Should I leave now lest becoming a brainlet?

I guess it is a good sign if you're not doing pure maths, and if you are doing pure maths i would say leave if they use it for easy stuff like calculating a 3x3 determinant or the like. I don't see why math students would tackle real problems like engineering students would, with actual difficult 10-digit numbers.

Hahaha I had a less memed introduction to linear algebra in my CS curricula. Get fucked, fag-ass. :')

I fell for the """"""""decent"""""""" state school meme.

>python

Why the fuck aren't you using Matlab?

>math in cs

Good question. No idea. My school has 2 intro different linear algebra courses. A code based one that uses matlab(for engies) that is offered from the engie department, and an old fashioned by the book, traditionally no software usage class offered by the math department. Professor wants to do it his way I guess? I hope it's the right way.

>introductory linear algebra
>math dept
>introductory
Disgusting

Why the fuck do you need to do calculations in an intro to linalg class? the only place we ever used software (or calculators) were in numerical methods classes, which are seperate and need the theoretical classes as prerequisites.

Yeah, why use a free, open-source, widely used, general purpose programming language when you can use a expensive proprietary software which no one uses except universities and giant global companies.

I've written a raytracer for my Lin Algebra class in python, it's slow as fuck but it does a good job. Most of it was written in opengl so it actually wasn't that much python. Its good op.

>Big numbers = difficult problems
This has to be bait

>what is GNU Octave

Python/numpy sucks balls compared to Matlab.

learning to program if you don't already know: good

python: 3/10

could do worse, could be c++

brainlets confirmed.

There is literally nothing that MATLAB does better than python, besides drain your wallet.

What is wrong with c++ and what is the bestest?

The only people who complain about C/C++ are brainlets

>another sepplesfag trying to latch on to C
every time

>what's the bestest
nearly all languages are ok, python is really pretty shitty for a language in widespread use but it isn't perl and that's already an accomplishment

Garbage collection, pointer fuck-up, macro-shit, etc.. Why be masochistic?
bestest: depends on what you want to do.

Typical opinion of somone new to programming.

You're fine, I think it's a good thing, but I may be biased as I'm actually ECE and minoring in math. I had to take two intro to linear algebra classes in order to minor in math (one for engineers w/ matlab, another for math students w/ no software) and I'm taking advanced linear algebra now (covers more theoretical topics over general fields rather than just "this is how you find the eigenvalues of a 2x2 matrix").

Honestly I liked the engineering LA course better. The amount of theoretical rigor was pretty similar (and low in both cases) but using programming to understand LA better is awesome. For example, after doing some hand calculations we'd verify them in matlab, and make animations and use linear transformations to scale/rotate/translate etc. And get a visual understanding of what eigenvectors + values + determinants mean in the context of linear transformations. Which is a much better way of learning a topic than drilling hand-calculations with no context.

P.S. python > matlab, and outside of other college courses like differential equations or maybe machine learning, any time you use LA it'll be through a computer. That's the whole reason LA is powerful.

I have only tried python and I have an old computer and it was really slow.

Is not memory management important?
I want to learn a good programming language for algorithms and numerical stuff.

>Is not memory management important?
It should be one of the last optimizations. It should be so late in your optimization quest that you may never have to learn C++. It is extremely rare that a person programming for their own edification and use ever needs more than to learn 1 tolerable language (java, racket/scheme/lisp, C#, ocaml/haskell for examples) and C. One tolerable language and C can take you extremely far.

If you want to get good at optimization, learn and practice a high level language like python for a while. The reality is, especially for beginner programmers, 99% of optimizations happen in algorithm choice+design, not in manual optimizations by taking advantage of language features like direct memory management. Also, a lot of scientific computing work is done by using a high level language like Python to design and test an algorithm quickly, then port it to C once it's verified to work well and be algorithmically efficient. It's harder and usually less time-efficient to try and juggle optimizing your algorithm and implementation at the same time.

It is, so why not let the compiler / interpreter handle that stuff?
I personally would really recommend python. It is multi-paradigma (especially both oo and functional), beautiful syntax (forced indentation, no semicols, ...), big fan community / widely used (-> quick help, lots of libs),...

Anything related to matrices, Matlab does ten times better than Python, that is a fact.

Yes, yes, well done. However, python is cheaper to use.

Thanks for the tips.

Probably a good thing.

I hate the autistic math professors that use actual numbers in pure math scenarios. It’s like, literally the only reason they put numbers in matrices in an intro lin algebra course is so the bottom feeders don’t spaz out because there’s too many letters.

So my guess is, the use of python will take care of having to frivolously do simple math by hand so that you can focus on what is actually going on and learn some of the practical uses of matrices. Yeah python is shit, but part of the reason it’s shit is because it’s written so actual retards can learn how to code. So it should be an easy grade.

As far as I know: Matlab uses LApack, so does NumPy ==> exactly the same.

>Typical opinion of somone new to programming.
I’m not.