# 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:** 70

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### Author: ![ElectronicTeaCup](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/electronicteacup/32/12647_2.png) [@ElectronicTeaCup](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ElectronicTeaCup)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2020, 9:07am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-for-prototyping-compared-to-matlab/33900/70 "2020-05-25T09:07:52Z")

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Thanks for bringing this thread back alive—I am still learning (and struggling) a lot, but the slack channel really helps with random small questions that I need to ask on a daily basis. My feelings so far: I love the syntax and the community, and when Julia works I am very happy. But often I am frustrated by what I feel “non-programming” issues (which isn’t true, but I am used to MATLAB’s “works out of the box” paradigm), like something breaking, no knowing how to get something to work, developing packages, managing paths, etc. For example, right now I got my analysis script running and formatted nicely but I can’t get weave.jl to produce a report I need to submit (some issue with plotly backend plots not being generated).

I recently bought the book [Hands-on Design Patterns and Best Practices with Julia](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-book-hands-on-design-patterns-and-best-practices-with-julia/33712) by @tk3369 to get a feel for, as you said “modern software engineering and workflow”. It is not specifically for MATLAB users, and is not a beginner book, but from what I read from the preface seems to cover general principles that are applicable in all domains. I’ve only read it for a day, so can’t vouch for it yet but the general tone of the book is very gentle and encouraging.

I’d love to hear from @tk3369 about what he feels about people coming from propriety languages such as MATLAB and how we can make the journey to effectively using Julia as smooth as possible.

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