If you haven't used it before, though, you should try it out first. I would buy Mathematica even at full price, which is at least $1000 for commercial use because I find it to be that valuable (I don't have to though because my institution provides it).

In practice, I use a mixture of Python+NumPy+., Mathematica and C++/C/Fortran for my work and I use all of them pretty extensively. I have used it extensively for years (~v5) and much prefer it over Matlab. It's more expensive than Matlab for students ($150 versus $50). Wolfram offers pretty generous site license terms for Mathematica, so a lot of places offer it for free (the one where I work does). You may want to check with your university or institution. I'd say this is because it's kind of weird to write a proper package in Mathematica Mathematica doesn't have the diversity of external packages that Matlab does, though some of the more popular features are included by default, e.g.

Conversely, Mathematica is dominant in some areas. Matlab is more popular than Mathematica in a lot of fields, so you might have trouble if you work with a lot of people who use Matlab. IMO the language is actually an advantage, but I know a lot of people have trouble with it. OTOH, when you write stuff correctly it's blazing fast and the optimizing compiler can really make your code fly. The biggest drawback is that explicit loops are agonizingly slow, so most people tend to write naive code for Mathematica at first and then wonder why it runs so slowly relative to Matlab. It's quite a lovely and powerful language once you get the hang of it, but it can be tough for people coming from a more traditional programming language.

Mathematica is quite unique as a language, something like a crossbreed of APL and Lisp. compare Matlab's fminsearch to Mathematica's NMinimize Mathematica's plots look a lot nicer for less effort, at least IMO.īasics are easier. The Mathematica docs are hands down the best in the industry.īetter plotting. Mathematica also has infinitely superior symbolic stuff, which Matlab has but few people use.īetter help. Mathematica can do all the numerical calculations that Matlab can too and the speed is typically comparable or superior ( if you do it correctly, see first disadvantage).

Wolfram mathematica free trial