- I prefer to use VIM and the command line for everything. The MATLAB IDE isn't my favorite.
- It's closed source (not optimal, but not necessarily a deal-breaker) and expensive (unless you're a student).
- Lots of useful code is sold as addons. The parallel computing toolbox, for example, is not included in the standard version of MATLAB.
- The language itself isn't as nice as Python is, at least for me. Language choice is a highly personal matter, however.
For these reasons, I am trying to install Numeric Python as a replacement for MATLAB. So far, it's a huge struggle. The value in having a working product out of the box is not insignificant. Python support on OS X isn't as strong as could be hoped, and the recent upgrade to Lion has also broken some dependencies. I am eschewing pre-built binaries for locally compiled versions to get around these issues. I'll update this post with resources.
