# Julia for prototyping, compared to MATLAB?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-for-prototyping-compared-to-matlab/33900>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** matlab\
**Created:** [January 28, 2020, 6:40pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-for-prototyping-compared-to-matlab/33900 "2020-01-28T18:40:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 45

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**Author:** ![Nathan\_Boyer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/nathan_boyer/32/14825_2.png) [@Nathan\_Boyer](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Nathan_Boyer)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2020, 7:11pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-for-prototyping-compared-to-matlab/33900/45 "2020-05-22T19:11:40Z")

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I think a lot of us are in the same boat. We came from Matlab as scientists, writing long, slow scripts that got the job done. We heard the promise of Julia and are trying to transition. However, we now have to learn the Julia language and software engineering at the same time, since Julia is a general purpose, fully featured language.

I had never used or heard of packages, modules, libraries, environments, backends, unit testing, repositories, or IDEs before I started using Julia. Learning software development the right way has been much harder so far than learning the Julia language. Most [Matlab to Julia tutorials](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1.5-dev/manual/noteworthy-differences/#Noteworthy-differences-from-MATLAB-1) cover syntax and convention differences, but not workflow differences. I could really use some comprehensive resources on learning modern software engineering and workflow from a basic Matlab user’s perspective. [Workflow suggestions in the Julia Docs](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1.5-dev/manual/workflow-tips/) are too cryptic for me to follow.

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