r/Python • u/Alexanderdaawesome • Aug 05 '19

Python's response to MATLAB

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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '19

I ditched them at an HPC center when they wanted to charge per core on a supercomputer.

Nonsense. @Matlab, your business model is broken.

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u/Stereoisomer Aug 05 '19 edited Aug 06 '19

I worked at a research nonprofit that houses over 300 PhDs and they wanted to charge us the commercial rate when we generate datasets and develop free software and tools for our field. We actually really wanted to use matlab but they were obstinate about not giving us the academic rate so we chose python instead. Now, a few years later, they incessantly call us trying to offer us the academic pricing but it’s way too little too late and our institution has been a large part of dragging the field towards python

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '19

Good!

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u/seismic_swarm Aug 06 '19

They missed out, but this was good for everyone. Nobody should be developing in a proprietary language that offers, arguably less, than languages like Python or Julia.

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u/Ferentzfever Aug 05 '19

Yeah, their HPC model is/was broken. I believe they've recently changed their pricing model to be similar to Abaqus pricing (i.e. expensive, but reasonable).

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u/acousticpants Homicidal Loganberry Connoisseur Aug 06 '19

that's an Oracle level move right there. next financial year they'd be changing to charge you per CPU cycle. guaranteed.

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u/ThePixelCoder Aug 10 '19

Fucking hell, charging per core is some next-level scummy shit. How many cores did that supercomputer have?

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '19

Way way way more than it would be logically feasible to charge for. It was a very dumb decision by Matlab.