This is interesting! Thanks for sharing!

Well, one context that I left out was that the course was pretty simple. We learned some basic loops, graphing, matrix operations, and writing some basic scripts to solve some problems. If you need a higher level functionality, then you’d probably struggle with GNU Octave, I don’t know.

So it can be done, simple as that.

I’ve just discovered Thonny! I’m not sure of the exact advantages over just vanilla Python though. Maybe because it’s an IDE.

It really depends on the course, but I think for general undergrad stuff, Python should be capable for most things.

I’m actually from Asia. I don’t understand requiring students to purchase a certain resource, if they’re already available elsewhere, or if similar resources already exist. I mean I understand it, I just don’t like the whole system.

Yeah, the theft comes from stealing someone’s labour, rather than their products. But it depends on the situation though.

As another commentor said, it kinda depends on what is the purpose of the course. If the purpose was to actually teach you the MATLAB ecosystem, then yea, sure, teach it all you want, but the institution has to provide the software.

But for an intro course? The students should probably be able to just use what they want.

Yeah, then other languages should be allowed as well.

I agree with that. It’s similar to Photoshop or Premier Pro. Sure, you could maybe, perhaps use open-source alternatives. But you’ll have to get used to a different set of (usually separate) software, dissimilar to what people all over the world uses.