What frustrates you about MATLAB?

I love MATLAB. It is so quick and easy to write software to do what you want. It has excellent debugging and profiling tools. It is cross platform, making code easy to share (assuming the other people have forked out for the not-so-cheap license). It has interfaces to other software.

However, there are some things about it that irk me. I'd like to hear from other people what things annoy them about MATLAB.

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Because this thread has become so large it is slow to load and navigate. Please post new answers in the second thread.

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[Michelle Hirsch]

Interesting start of a thread, Oliver. I encourage all posters to write a single point per answer to make it easier for others to vote up answers they agree with.

[Oliver Woodford]

There will, of course, be no accepted answer. It's about what you think.

[Kenneth Eaton]

It sounds like this question may overlap to some degree with this previous one: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1325-what-s-missing-from-matlab

[Oliver Woodford]

Yes, somewhat, but not entirely. This is "What's missing + what's wrong?". My answer on cost is an example of the latter. But the other question is more positively phrased, so will undoubtedly get the lion's share of responses from loyal MATLABers. :)

[Ozan Oguz]

Help and examples sections are not newbie friendly.

[Jan]

@Ozan Oguz: Please post an answer in the answer section, not as comment.

I'm very surprised, because it did not find any better documentation and more useful examples in any software package I've tested. Please add some explicit points for criticism.

[Joseph Areeda]

My biggest frustration is the level of backwards compatibility. We have a GUIDE based application shared among many users in an international collaboration. It has been used since about 2005, I started in 2011. Probably the most common user complaint is I loaded a new version of Matlab and your program doesn't work anymore.

2014b was a big changed that was absolutely necessary to make immediately because it was the only one that worked on Mac Yosemite.

Now the same code won't run on 2015a. I understand the reasons for incompatible upgrades, I just wish they didn't happen so often.

Joe

[Walter Roberson]

I have R2014a working on Yosemite. Note: I am not using a Retina display.

[Joseph Areeda]

Hi Walter,

Are you using GUIDE based GUI apps?

Joe

[Oliver Woodford]

Joe, your comment is really an answer.

[Walter Roberson]

I avoid GUIDE based GUIs. I wrote my own layout routines to do layout at run-time.

[Tim Bigelow]

working with the variable page is extremely annoying! None of these really simple functions work at all well:

deleting a variable renaming a variable trying to delete one column in an array variable- I've yet to figure out how to make that happen duplicating a variable with a new name- and the help file for such basic things gives no clue?

[Tim Bigelow]

the variable page is useless! How much does this software cost? Has nobody else figured out such simple stuff is non-functional?

Cant enter new numbers Can't enter more columns in the column number entry area

Can't copy and paste in cells

When numbers are entered manually, they are justified left or right?

why not all the same?

why do i have to enter two returns just to get one return in this suggestion page?

[Stephen Cobeldick]

@Tim Bigelow: What do you mean by the "variable page" This is not mentioned anywhere in the online documentation.

Do you mean the Variable Viewer, which as its name implies, is intended for viewing summaries of variables in the workspace?

[Walter Roberson]

With regards to two returns, see http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/help/markup/

[Akua Agyeman]

I get that people who use matlab are super-smart...but for us less exalted people, could people answer questions assuming less knowledge. Half the answers to the questions read like PhD thesis, not great when learning to program and use matlab...think PYTHON, Keep it simple.

[Walter Roberson]

Akua Agyeman:

I sometimes explain a fair bit in my contributions. Doing so takes a lot of writing. I could explain even more, but at what point do I stop explaining?

When I start writing, I often do not know that person asking the question knows anything about how to program a computer, or what an algorithm is, or about how computers store information. I do not know that they understand positioning notation for representing numbers; I do not know that they know how to add or subtract. If they have asked a question about, for example acceleration, then I do not know that they know what acceleration is, or about calculus, or about the concept of "rate of change" or "integration" or even what a curve is.

My explanation has to stop somewhere. I have to guess what the person understands and write to that level. If I underestimate them and they already know some concept then I have wasted a bunch of time explaining it, which wastes my time and their time. If I overestimate them and they do not know some concept, then I have not wasted any time, and the person can ask for clarification of the parts they do not understand.

To this you need to take into account that people often do not ask the question they think they are asking, or often omit information needed to understand what they really want to know. I could spend a lot of time explaining something, but it might turn out not to be relevant to what the person wanted to know, because the question was not clear. That wastes a lot of my time.

It is therefore more efficient to explain less and let the person clarify or ask questions. This might be a bit frustrating to the person to not have received a full response the first time, but there is a real cost to us providing responses to everything that the person might have meant, or to explain everything the person might not understand.

[Birk Andreas]

There is no way to extend precison beyond double for fast numeric computations. There is a third party toolbox (not for free of course) which seems to do the right thing (I have not tested but it looks quite convincing: "Advanpix Multiprecision Computing Toolbox"). Why Mathworks can't you compete with the state of the art and build this into standard MATLAB already. Is it too difficult for you?

[Walter Roberson]

Birk Andreas, the Symbolic Computing toolbox supports arbitrary precision, up to 2^29 (over 500 million) decimal digits.

Providing extended precision for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division is not so bad, but it is a fair bit of work to extend that to include all the trig functions, exp() and expm(), eigenvalues, and so on.

John D'Errico has a File Exchange contribution http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/36534-hpf-a-big-decimal-class which does extended precision decimal for a number of operations.

[Birk Andreas]

Walter Roberson, thank you for the link! Regarding the symbolic computing toolbox: I know vpa. However, it is way too slow for some applications where fast numerical computations are required. In the meantime I tested the Advanpix toolbox. In my case the hit on computation time is still quite large (maybe faster than vpa but still too slow for me). I could live with a factor of two for qadruple precision but it is more like 100 or so. It is really a pity!

[Jan]

@Birk: This is the expected behavior: While modern pocessors are optimized to process doubles very efficiently, simulating the arithmetics in software must be remarkably slower. A factor of two is impossible.

[Walter Roberson]

As a guide: NVIDIA's CUDA devices generally perform 64 bit floating point at 1/32 or 1/24 of 32 bit floating point performance; however, some of the very high end cards handle it at 1/3 of single precision performance by having specialized hardware for it. We can expect that if it were just a small matter of software algorithms to get 64 bits at only a factor of 2 slower, that NVIDIA would have implemented that. We can therefore deduce that software floating point 64 bit emulation is about 1/24 the rate of single precision; that would tend to suggest that quadruple precision would tend to be about 1/24 of double precision for good software without hardware quadruple precision assist.

[Alexandra Beaven]

The fmincon and fminunc functions are not great. My junior assistant ran tests against solver in excel and found that it gets better results, takes less time to get there, and is less prone to local optima than these two functions. Annoying because I am a BIG Matlab fan and have no intention of rewriting 25 years of optimization code in another langauage (I am under pressure to rewrite in Python).

[Matt J]

My junior assistant ran tests against solver in excel and found that it gets better results, takes less time to get there, and is less prone to local optima than these two functions

If the Excel solver is avoiding local optima non-accidentally, then it is an apples-to-oranges comparison. It likely means your junior assistant is running fmincon and fminunc against the evolutionary/genetic solver in Excel. The fair comparison would be to run Excel against ga from Matlab's Global Optimization Toolbox.

[Valentina Compagnucci]

NO ENTIENDO COMO DEFINE LA FUNCION

En este caso, la fuente de tensión es constante Vcc=10V y las condiciones iniciales son:

 ’(0)=
Definimos f (función que representa el comportamiento del circuito) con el comando inline:
>> f=inline('[u(2);-2/2*u(2)-1/4.56*u(1)]','t','u')
f =
Inlinefunction:
f(t,u)[u(2);-2/2.4*u(2)-1/4.56*u(1)]

[Rik]

You shouldn't be using inline anymore to define anonymous functions. Also, posting your question in English on its own thread increases your chances on getting an answer. Have a read here and here.

[Asif]

I hate how add-ons aren't available for student or home license holders. For example, why should the HDL coder and verifier add-ons require a massively expensive professional license?

[Arushi Bagga]

Not able to execute functions easily. Such an annoying issue

[Image Analyst]

Arushi, I find function very easy to execute. You just call the function by name passing it whatever arguments it requires. At least if they're a regular function -- anonymous functions can be a bit cryptic but you don't have to do it that way (you can always do it as a regular function instead).

You might explain your annoyances in a new question in more detail and we'll try to give you tips on how to do it.

[Walter Roberson]

(Regular functions cannot capture values the way anonymous functions do.)

[Walter Roberson]

I know that some people find it frustrating that functions do not look for variables in their calling environments, so if for example you have

function y = f(x)

and you execute f by clicking on the green run button, that it will not look in the base workspace to find x.

[J. Alex Lee]

On the topic of functions and their interfaces, it used to be that I wished Matlab had a way to easily do default values for optional arguments, and named arguments...but the arguments block is a pretty welcome addition, which addresses default values, and I've taken to the key/val argument methodology that works well. But it is frustrating that original Matlab had lots of ad hoc "argument parsing" so that you had a "flexible" interface...I guess you can call it convenient, but it often means more doc/help look-ups for me to understand how to correctly specify arguments...legend() is one that gave me a lot of trouble recently. Can't be helped at this point though, I guess.

[Sky Trader]

I tell you what irks me about Matlab: Everything. It is beyond doubt the most user unfriendly software I have ever used. The most simple tasks that you can do in other software, like importing data (used to be easy, not they've changed something and I can't even get apps to work on xls. data anymore), or installing an app is LIKE PULLING TEETH. Today I "simply" went to install an app I downloaded from there. But it's greyed out when you try and select it..... Then the "help" method suggested was to " Select "Add-Ons", and check that the Add-Ons install folder is writable." Of course there is no preference in "Add ons" that gives you this option. Typical....

Use Python, Use R, Use anytthing but this Matlabs app.

#BeyondFrustrating

[Adam Danz]

@Sky, I feel your frustration. I commonly experience that during the early stages of learning new software. Having used Matlab, Python, and R, I think the gap between Python and Matlab is small. I'd bet that it takes less than 10 weeks of jumping into one after being familiar with the other before comfort levels start to match. R is another story and is least intuitive IMO. Another strength of Matlab is the documentation which is well formatted and largely consistent across all toolboxes. Once you learn how the documentation is organized, I find it very easy and quick to find what I'm looking for. Lastly, the community here is very helpful and if you can't find an answer to your questions in the forum, people are eager to answer new questions.

[Walter Roberson]

The recent changes that I know of with regards to importing xls data:

1. A few releases ago, uiimport() started importing text as string() data type by default instead of character vector. The user has control over this in the tool.
2. As of R2020a, readtable() and related functions now do an internal detectImportOptions() by default, which does a more thorough analysis and can result in different variable types, or can result in prefixes and suffixes automatically being detected. For example a field with a leading $ would previously have been considered to be a character vector, but now the $ might be treated as a prefix to be removed and the number imported as numeric. There is an option to turn off the default detection.
3. Importing of time and duration data has been improved over the last several releases; in particular a field such as '13:42' would previously have been imported as character vector but would now be imported as duration. There is an option to control that.

[Furqan Hashim]

The cost of this software does not justify the time and effort you have to put in to get things going.

On one side you have a free of cost general purpose programming language (Python) that is easy to interpret and way faster than MATLAB. On the other hand you have an expensive software which would chew up all your RAM and make you write code that is difficult to debug along with a limited community support.

Take an example of group by in Python & MATLAB

Python:

df.groupby(by="a").sum()

MATLAB:

total = varfun(@sum, df,'GroupingVariables','a','InputVariables','b')

Would I pay and write extra lines of code?

Why would I pay for a tool that has a limited community support?

[Walter Roberson]

My memory seems to be coming up a bit short in bringing to mind any vendor that has unlimited community support?

So give us some benchmarks: What response time would you consider acceptable, and how complicated a question would be fair game?

For example if someone posts saying that they need the complete code for their honors project in robot surgery, automatic detection and excision of brain tumors in mice, then how much time would be fair to allocate before someone gave them the complete debugged and documented code ready to be handed in? (Because if complete code is not routinely provided in such cases, then that would only be limited community support, and you are specifically opposed to limited community support, so you are envisioning a community where every request for code is completely fulfilled.)

[dpb]

Times have changed drastically and there's a lot more options out there now than were in late '70s and early '80s when Cleve invented MATLAB and wrote the first versions (in FORTRAN, no less!).

The PC version was introduced in December, 1984 -- that's now over 35 years ago; it's no wonder the syntax that has evolved from then doesn't necessarily match what might be used starting from scratch now.

tcl/tk didn't arrive until 1988, python first introduced in 1991 but didn't really take off until relatively recently.

Meanwhile MATLAB was solving real problems...it certainly saved me big time when in the consulting gig to not have to try to put all the pieces together that were in even the initial MATLAB-PC.

A brief history of matlab> for those who aren't aware is probably educational.

[Bruno Luong]

Personnaly I don't pay for MATLAB because of the community suppport. With few exception the document are mostly great that I rarely need to look elsewhere. Not sure it's the case of python.

[John]

Matlab should 'update' the new version instead of installing the new version. The reconfiguration is a nighmare because it's done only once a year or so. The extreme example is firefox, which updates once or twice a day. The users don't need to reconfigure anything.

At least matlab should provide a choice with every new version: new installtion or updating on existing version (and keep all configurations as is).

[Rik]

@John: I crossposted your comment to the second thread, please continue the discussion there. Feel free to post an answer there yourself. If you choose to do so, I will repost my comment to your answer and delete my answer.

[Samuel Gray]

R2020b for Linux just wrecked my CentOS8 install.

It wouldn't install under my standard user account (needed access to /usr/lib and failed to get it) and then I tried to install it as sudo and that failed and then it wouldn't allow me to type anything in the email address text box when I tried it once more as a standard user. So I rebooted it and now it's throwing a dracut related error

".../etc/multipath.com does not exist, blacklisting all devices"

trying to shut down instead of completing startup and fails to do so then tries to start the GNOME Display manager and goes haywire. What fun. So R2020b for Linux is not compatible with CentOS8 after all I guess.

Note, these are problems just getting it installed and running...do you know how long it's been since I've had an installer break a working workstation Linux install to the point where it is unable to boot to the desktop? This is why Linux users prefer open-source tools and why network-admins prefer daily backups, networked user data directories and stock images! So, "Matlab on Linux" yay, "the Matlab installer breaking the Linux install and requiring a reinstall+reconfigure with a probable reformat and erasure of all user data on the partition" BOO!

[does this happen with Python and Eclipse? Hm...]

Luckily I have an Ubuntu install on the same drive and a good rescue usb key.

Now I just need to figure-out how to fix the CentOS8 boot process. No big deal.

Still, this is like Windows 98 all over again.

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/514366-error-while-installing-matlab-r2020a-on-fedora-32?s_tid=srchtitle

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/364551-why-is-matlab-unable-to-run-the-matlabwindow-application-on-linux?s_tid=srchtitle

https://docs.centos.org/en-US/centos/install-guide/Rescue_Mode/

https://www.golinuxcloud.com/boot-in-single-user-mode-rhel-centos-8-linux/

https://www.golinuxhub.com/2017/12/how-do-i-set-or-change-default-runlevel/

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/installation_guide/s1-boot-init-shutdown-process

https://linuxconfig.org/redhat-8-start-service-on-boot

https://access.redhat.com/articles/754933

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/487256-fedora-30-matlab-not-installing

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/configuring-xorg-as-default-gnome-session/

(this does not help as it siimply changes the display server not the desktop environment, which is corrupt,

and so the problem just has a different manifestation but the same source)

[Martin Brorsen]

Compiled Matlab AppDesigner executables tend to forget functions when not used for some time

[Allan Prince]

Why are the plot settings so difficult to find. For example, if I want to change the size of a plot window, I have to scour their webpage to search through each of a hundred different ways that plots can be modified. Many don't seem to be formally documented (at least not that I can find). They are embedded in responses to the help center and I have to read 50 of those before I find what I'm looking for.

I've had to create my own help center just to record all the features related to plot so I don't have to search for it next time I need it.

Something as commonly used as the plot feature should be quick and easy to use and it's worth their time to clean up this mess of features related to plot.

[Steven Lord]

What do you mean by "change the size of a plot window"?

• Change the size of the figure window
• Change the amount of space in the figure window occupied by the axes
• Change the limits of the axes to show a larger part of a plot that's larger than fits in the current view of the axes
• (As a bit of a stretch) Change the width of the line or the size of the markers used to plot the line. [If you hadn't used the word "window" this would be a more plausible interpretation of your request.]

The plotting capabilities of MATLAB do offer a lot of functionality and with that must come some level of complexity. I will admit Handle Graphics does have a bit of a learning curve.

The main way I would recommend interacting with Handle Graphics objects is:

• Find the handle of the object with which you want to interact. This could involve calling plot or other graphics function with an output argument, using the findobj or findall functions, or using the ancestor function.
• Search the documentation for the task you're trying to complete to see if there's a function. Use axis or xlim to change the X axis limits, for instance.
• Use dot notation to change the object's properties if there is no convenience function. f = figure; f.Position = newCoordinates; as an example.

One problem with your suggestion of "clean up this mess of features related to plot" is that the plot function has been around for at least 20 years (probably closer to 30 at this point) and people have written a lot of code that take advantage of those "mess of features". When we introduced the new version of the graphics system in release R2014b we did fix some long-standing bugs, introduced new capabilities, and eliminated or simplified some of the helper functions. Even though we tried to be careful about it and give plenty of warning, some users were still annoyed/upset with us for breaking their code. Doing a wholesale "blow up the system and replace it with something new" would be painful for both MathWorks and for long time users.

Answer 1

[Oliver Woodford]

MATLAB's figure rendering and exporting functions are so full of bugs and "features" it defies belief. The rendering is very slow and stalls computations - rendering should be in a separate thread and not delay computations (unless specified by the user). It is crazy that you can't have a seperate colormap per axes, either.

[Sean de Wolski]

Agree completely. We actually gave a few of our undergrads the (daunting) task of learning MeVisLab for the purpose of rendering.

[Royi Avital]

They need to rewrite the whole Graphics Stack of MATLAB.

[Wouter]

I second this comment. I am seriously considering switching to Mathematica just because of the extremely crappy figure- and graphics handling...

[per isakson]

HG2 is around the corner.

[Oliver Woodford]

Could still be a long wait - it's been talked about for years. Also I've tried it in R2013b, not enough to work out if it's as buggy, but enough to realize it's just as slow! Fingers still crossed for something good, though.

[Steven]

These commenters are crazy, you can do those things if you take the time to learn how to use the graphics package with set and get you can get any result you want. You just have to learn how to write your code for matlab

[Oliver Woodford]

@Steven: The issues raised here were rendering speed and bugs, not what can be rendered. I also disagree with your comment about being able to get any result you want. Volumetric rendering is non-existent, and solutions like vol3d don't look great. Also it is not possible to texturemap an arbitrary mesh, and the work-around of vertex coloring a much higher resolution mesh is beyond the scope of knowing how to use set and get.

[Oliver Woodford]

As of R2014b, you can have a separate colormap per axes.

[Tayyip Ensar Özkaya]

The 3D control of pointclouds is just the hell!!

Answer 2

[Ian]

• GUIDE is a such an underpowered mess. Very poor set of widgets, endless bugs and terrible performance in the Guide editor (try moving sets of elements with the keyboard and weep!). TMW has dragged along hidden support of more UI widgets likes tabs, why can't they just update GUIDE and bring it.them into the modern age? Yair Altman does more in one blog post than TMW does in each year's paired releases to make GUIs better in Matlab!
• UNICODE support -- why is TMW so far behind on this!?
• Graphics quality -- graphics and text should be anti aliased by default and better composited, the pixel vomit is unacceptable on such an expensive product and one where its competitors are so ahead in this regard.
• Poor OS X support. Failure to copy vector figures to clipboard is my biggest gripe.

[Gary]

I agree 100% regarding your GUIDE comment.

[Juan Cardelino]

I can't agree more with you regarding unicode support.

[QiQin Zhan]

You just say what we all want to say about it.

[Oliver Woodford]

The App Designer will hopefully improve things.

[Robert Cumming]

An alternative is to try out this GUI Toolbox as a completely different way to design and build GUIs.

Includes a guide equivalent. No guidata, no handles, an easy to use GUI API with lots of methods. Free demo version includes many examples.

[Michelle Hirsch]

The new graphics system in 14b is a good start - added uitab/uitabgroup and anti-aliased graphics (among many, many other enhancements).

MATLAB has made tremendous progress in Unicode support since 2011, so take a look again if you haven't lately.

[Eng. Fredius Magige]

The Matlab is fantastic tool to me. It do a lots as long as you known what are your input and expected out. I, indeed, finalizing coding Water Distribution Network Design Optimization tool, as it has no limit of number of pipes from different materials and pressure rates. This a major challenge to many optimization tools. Further, Matlab has assist me to plot and lay out XYZ of all networks.

The major challenge I have been faced is consume a lot of time when apply/looping through "for-end" which I have no way to escape it

Thanks all Matlab Community

[Walter Roberson]

Note: Unicode support in plots was added in R2014b. However, there is no obvious way to add Unicode in Latex.

Note: anti-aliasing of lines and text was added in HG2.

Answer 3

[Jan]

Using a C-compiler not included in the list of known compilers is horrible. "mex -setup" calls an M-file, which calls a PERL script, which creates a DOS batch file, which is interpreted by another PERL script, which calls the compiler through the command line interface.

Strange. A tiny M-file could create the same command line call to the compiler also. But it would be much easier to adjust it to a different compiler.

[Jan]

I wanted to add the optimization flag /arch:SSE2 in my MEX call in Matlab 2009a. This works with:

mex -O OPTIMFLAGS="$OPTIMFLAGS /arch:SSE2" func.c

Because I have to do this programmatically I need the functional form and tried:

mex('-O', 'OPTIMFLAGS="$OPTIMFLAGS /arch:SSE2"', 'func.c')

>> ERROR: flag /arch:SSE2 is not recognized.

Ugly parser! This is the correct calling sequence:

mex('-O', 'OPTIMFLAGS="$OPTIMFLAGS', '/arch:SSE2"', 'func.c')

So I have to split the string inside the double quoted section, although these double quotes are exactly needed to signal, that the string should not be split! This is a drawback of the complicated pipeline as BAT-> M-> PERL-> Compiler.

[m4 Chrennikov]

Jan, you can always edit *.bat files directly.

[dpb]

But why should one have to is the point...

[Walter Roberson]

The method of setting up compilers was completely rewritten a couple of releases ago, at least for MS Windows. I do not know if it is any better or worse... but quite different.

[dpb]

At least as convoluted still and nearly impossible to make use of anything other than the one or two "blessed" compilers --

[Praveen Kumar]

I had two subsystems(A and B). I want B inports which are conncected to which outports in A. Any ideas.

Answer 4

[David Young]

Overriding subsref and subsasgn in a class is spectacularly awkward.

The problem is this. Suppose you override subsref in order to change behaviour of obj(...). Then your subsref is also called for the syntax obj.propname. In order for it to handle this correctly (i.e. behave the same as the built-in subsref) it has to reimplement all the checks for access protections that are normally done by the system. For just how problematic this is, look at Daniel's answer to my question here.

Apart from this major difficulty, it's also inefficient for every subsref to have to switch on the indexing type ('.', '()', or '{}') on every call, and for the system to have to build a struct that includes the indexing type as well as the indexes.

As far as I can see, it would be so much better if the different indexing syntaxes called three different methods.

[Daniel Shub]

Wait until you try and get your overloaded subsref function to handle colon and the other "odd" indexing notation: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/6764-overloading-subsref

You would have thought that with the major overhaul of the OO system that they would have gotten it much better. Often simple OO things are inefficient and complex things are near impossible.

[David Young]

Daniel: indeed!

[SK]

Agree. subsref and subsassign are unusable and can be fairly called broken in principle. Also, once you have overloaded () for a class, you can no longer have consistent notation for arrays of that class type. The basic reason is the overuse of the () operator for array subscripting, instead of the more sane [].

Answer 5

[Oliver Woodford]

It's very expensive (unless you're a student), especially if you use lots of toolboxes. Fortunately my company pays :), but if I start my own company I'll think twice about (ok, before) buying MATLAB.

[Sean de Wolski]

Also agreed. Fortunately my University has a campus license that includes almost, if not, all of the toolboxes.

I think when I graduate and look for a real job, I may make a professional license with a few of the toolboxes, either a requirement for the company, or I'll just buy it as a gift to myself.

[Jan]

If you pay a skilled engineer with 70 Euro per hour and he needs 200 hours to program and debug e.g. some image processing functions in Matlab, you spend 1400 Euro for a toolbox without standardized documentation and support.

Now let the programmer create an equivalent software with the free MSVC-Express version. Well, I assume Matlab helps to save more money than it costs.

[Walter Roberson]

The cost is a serious constraint, both personally and for the organization I work for. Personally as in it notably constrains the questions I can answer: buying a $2000 toolbox in order to answer questions for free is not a wise investment decision. At work, I'm trying to help someone stuck with a 2007b release who has a program that needs 2008a to run: their department cannot afford to update the license.

[Scragmore]

I am currently unemployed but when employed I'm mainly do business analyst type work within the financial sector. Recently to help make me more employable I started to learn programming c/c++ as well as looking at Matlab. I was luck I managed to get a hand-me-down copy of 2007, without this I would never have been able to afford Matlab.

But before you say if you can't afford it don't use it, think about this. When I get employed I will use the tools I know, if its Matlab that means a license. If I am luck enough to be in a hiring position I may be more likely to hire people who use Matlab if I can use it as well.

Mathworks has a challenging problem, paying for programmers to produce world class software and accessibility to help perpetuate your user base.

[John Petersen]

I often hear the argument that Matlab saves more than it costs, but what is forgotten is that there are a myriad of software tools other than Matlab -- most cost considerably less. So comparing Matlab and the associated cost with having pencil and paper is not a fair assessment. Also, I'd rather see the toolboxes combined but left at $1k. e.g. Combine all the Signal Processing toolboxes into one, combine all the control into one, all the financial into one, etc.

[Mike]

Matlab is great software and really useful. Yes, way too many toolboxes and some of them just repeat functions in other toolboxes. Combine them as JP suggested, which I would think reduces code maintenance, management and likely saves operational costs. It would also be a stronger selling point. Cost is huge for small companies and startups.. Really, is there a point to having 100+ toolboxes?

[Stephen]

This is a point that I think should be emphasized more.

Students are required to learn Matlab in many engineering programs, and provided it for the low cost of a textbook. Compared to a license with a handful of toolbox in their area of expertise that they use regularly, the student price is roughly 1% of the actual cost.

For a large company with sufficient revenue, the full price might be bearable. However, if a group of students wants to bring a commercializable idea to fruition either while they are still students, or shortly after graduating, the cost is a substantial barrier to using Matlab in an age of lean startups. Of course, there are alternatives, but students just spent four years mastering Matlab, not those alternatives.

It would be great to see some graduated licensing scheme, or have a freelance license available that makes it feasible for small companies and independent engineers to use this software commercially.

[Jan]

@Stephen: Although I understand, that a cheap freelancer licence would be a benefit for freelancers, it is very clear, that especially their job is creating commercial software. And then the price of Matlab should be forwarded to the customers, but not to TMW! Why should TMW sponsor freelancers massively?

[Image Analyst]

Perhaps there could be a MATLAB-Elements, like Adobe Photoshop, or a cloud version, again, like Photoshop: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/buying-guide.html

There is the standard Photoshop version for $699, Photoshop Elements for $99.99 (a real bargain), and a monthly Photoshop Cloud for only $20 per month.

[Walter Roberson]

MATLAB and associated toolboxes are priced at a point where it is not feasible for non-students to use the software non-commercially, such as volunteers, or freeware / donationware, or low-budget NGO. TMW has no legal obligation to provide lower-cost licenses for those purposes, but we can still acknowledge the fact that personal licenses are more or less confined to the well-to-do individuals.

[Steven]

Cloud versions are BAD! but good if you wan't to own it for a month and never use it again

[Michelle Hirsch]

MATLAB Student and MATLAB Home are great affordable ways to get personal licenses of MATLAB. MATLAB Student now starts at $49 (US).

MathWorks is offering an increasing number of license options for academic and professional use, so it can be worth checking in to see if MATLAB might be more affordable than you may have thought.

[Rik]

I was indeed surprised to see that the price for a non-commercial home license is currently €119 for the base and an additional €35/toolbox. That puts it on the price level of an expensive hobby, instead of only being affordable if pirated.

Other real alternatives are either very different in what they can do (like R), or half of the functions are not implemented and much slower (like Octave). I think the price is still steep, but you can start off with Octave and then move on to Matlab.

[Walter Roberson]

I see people posting complaining that the Home version does not support HDL generation for boards that are $US1100 to $US33000.

[Asif]

It doesn't make sense how the Home and Student licenses are not eligible to purchase the HDL coder and HDL verifier add-ons. Students and hobbiests would easily use these for FPGA and embedded projects.

Supported boards include Digilent's low-cost sub $250 options. If the HDL add-ons were available and priced similarly, I'd gladly fork over more money to Mathworks :).

[Chris van Halewyn]

Yep. Me too! I've got a Nexys4 board (£200 -not $33,000!) that I got because it is recommended for education/training and got Vivado (free) to program it. Vivado calls out for Matlab HDL tools on installation but they are not available under the home licence which would have been so cool...

Matlab, please sort out home licensing for HDL tools. It's time.

Answer 6

[Robert Cumming]

plot legends are not always placed in the "best" position - quite often its right slap bang on top of the data...

[Dan]

You can click on them (the legend) and move to another spot (even outside the axes). Also you can position the legend as an object at creation time or after by asiging to a variable and using "set".

[Matt J]

You can, but shouldn't the default legend position be somewhere not covering data?

Answer 7

[Dan]

Functions and classes defined within a package should not have to import the package or refer to other members of the package with the package name ... the import should be automatic ...

Given the requirement to refer to the local package name within the class or function definitions ...

• It is difficult to rename the package
• It is difficult to place the package within another package
• It clutters up the function and class code with import calls ...

Please fix...

Answer 8

[Sean]

I would love to just write x++; instead of x = x + 1;

[Derek O'Connor]

I would prefer to write inc(x) and dec(x) instead of x = x+1 and x = x-1.

[Jan]

This has been discussed in CSSM repeatedly. It would concern MATLAB's fundamental methods for addressing variables. I do not assume, that this will be implemented.

But I see the benefit. A dirty C-Mex implementation is possible using some undocumented API functions. But I will not implement an instable method, which save micro-seconds, but can cause weeks for debugging.

[Wilfred]

Funny, in Simulink Stateflow (action language) this is already possible.

[Andrew Reibold]

If this is your biggest issue with the software, I'm very happy for you :)

[jaya viMALA]

Yes Me too, in Starting i am Confusion on thsi x++, Y--. that's why i try to use it may time. I am use this only.

Regards,

[Adam]

Please don't use Matlab Answers for advertising links. I deleted the link you added here.

Answer 9

[Oliver Woodford]

MATLAB is lacking tools for saving movies in decent compressed video formats (e.g. MPEG4, H.264 etc.). Currently I find myself saving a huge list of PNG files, then converting these to a video in an external application, which is far from ideal.

[Oliver Woodford]

Happily, this is becoming less true with every release, on Windows at least.

[Wyken Seagrave]

The secret of creating high quality videos on Windows is to use VideoWriter, an object compressed with Motion JPEG, and not movie2avi, which produces low quality video. So it is frustrating that, when you search the Help for "movie", and you find movie2avi, the only reference to VideoWriter is a single word at the bottom of the help page. I think there should be a warning that it has replaced movie2avi!

Answer 10

[Patrick]

The figure-export is a pain, if annotation are used they will move about, not all of them and not much and not to any order (at least nothing i could recognise) but sometimes a few mm in the odd direction.

[K E]

Also, quality of copied figures is poor (blurry lines/text) and requires workarounds like export_fig .

Answer 11

[Richard Finley]

I have been a licensed user of MATLAB for the past 20 years. I am also a big Mathematica user and sometimes use Maple and Mathcad and of course I love R and Python. I have enjoyed using MATLAB for my numerical work, but the licensing hassles have driven me to the point that I am considering just dropping it after all these years. I don't mind paying the (substantial) price for my license -- but then just let me do my work -- whether it is on my main desktop or my laptop. I used to just get the update CDs and my license number by email and no hassles. Are you really making more money by stopping piracy with all your licensing hassles? I doubt it. You are driving away your paying customers/user base. I sympathize with this (former) user: http://mybrainextension.blogspot.com/2011/07/aaaarrrrrrgh-matlab.html

[K E]

Also I find the license manager cryptic for managing a small group of user licenses. If I have a license management task, I almost never open up the license manager and succeed on my first try; I always end up calling/emailing tech support.

[Jan]

Without doubt FlexLM is neither smart, nor user-friendly. I've struggeled with several other software package also, which use this license manager. The usual procedure is 12 minutes for installing the software, 2 hours trying to install the license manager, one hour for emails and phone calls to the technical support, who comes in the next day, look of what I have done so far. Finally the sessions end with something like: "I've called the developpers this morning and they told me, that you need the computer's name and nothing else." But after we typed in the IP, the software suddenly accepts the connection to the license server.

The FlexLM software is a really bad choice. It is very sad, that TMW has decided for this service, because all it does is impeding the legal usage of Matlab substantially.

[Mike]

The fact that if I want to deactivate an old version of matlab on a PC with 2 versions, since there is a new release out and flex deactivates all versions on the PC is a pain.... Why doesn't it just deactivate the one selected?

[Mace]

I agree. License hassles are the main reason why I'm switching to R. I constantly am interrupted by license issues. E.g. I drop wifi or just vpn and matlab does not execute commands without even notifying about it - it just does nothing while I think it's computing. Or I wake up my mac and before it connects to wifi matlab already shuts down saying it lost connection to the license server.

Answer 12

[Csaba]

My current frustration is with the Matlab editor: when the same M-script source is open in both the Matlab editor and another code editor (certain things are more efficient in the other editor), and the Matlab editor detects a change that was made to the file outside, it reloads (which is correct) - but it also forgets about all location information from before the reload, and jumps to the beginning of the file.

I would expect this is just an oversight (how hard would it be to remember the line at which the cursor was before reload - even if the code change that triggered the reload shifted content, most of the time this would be by only a few lines or pages, still much better than starting from the top of the file every_time_ ...).

And if that's not feasible, at least letting the bookmarks survive the reload would be a reasonable work-around, but sadly no, they are erased as part of the reload as well.

Am I the only one having trouble with this?

[Image Analyst]

That does sound frustrating. I also have the same problem when I go to GUIDE and save it from GUIDE and return to MATLAB. It blows away bookmarks, breakpoints, etc.

[jaya viMALA]

yes, my Students also get the Same issues, I need some Guidence on this

Regards,

Answer 13

[Ian]

Lack of OpenCL support: TMW forces us to depend firstly on a toolbox for this functionality, and secondly on the vendor lock-in using CUDA. Mathematica builds this in to its core, not some toolbox, and provides both CUDA and OpenCL support so we aren't forced to a single GPU vendor.

[Richard Crozier]

www.gp-you.org hosts an open source gpu toolbox

[Royi Avital]

I wish they supported Open CL as well.

[Val Schmidt]

I agree with this one!!! I'm a mac user and since macs don't use Nvidia graphics cards it is very difficult to use the GPU.

[Walter Roberson]

Happening to read Val's comment again just now: MacBook Pro's added NVIDIA graphics cards in June of 2012; I am using one of them right now.

[Curtis]

They've had CUDA support for years and STILL the only way to get ANY OpenCL implementation is with third party plug-ins. Hopefully the massive hiring TMW is doing will start to change things soon.

[Walter Roberson]

I am told that OpenCL is more a framework allowing for the possibility of various actions being possible, but with considerable variability in what the different manufacturers support, and therefore Mathworks would effectively have to do different OpenCL implementations for each manufacturer and to specialize it for different models within the manufacturer.

Answer 14

[tom 1line=1bug]

Frustrating factoids after living with Matlab since version 4.x:

1. Ambiguous use of parenthesis ([([( indexing operations and function calling )])]). I wish Matlab's syntactic sugar could differentiate between this two actions, using parenthesis and something else (i.e. like Mathematica's use of parenthesis vs square brackets)

2. Poor quality graphics (already mentioned in detail by other fellows)

3. Excessive "commoditization" or segmentation of functionality that should be part of the core Matlab product (e.g. signal processing, image processing, statistics, and pdes).

4. I wish there was better quality control when rolling out toolboxes. The seemingly lack of coding style/guidelines is particularly annoying. Even toolboxes meant to be used together have inconsistent syntax and seem a bunch of functions "bolted-on" to Matlab, rather than coherent extensions of M language.

5. I hopelessly wish there was first-rate support for functional programming.

6. Very poor support for time series and data structure requiring multiformat date/time indexing.

99nth. Non-specific gripe: Over time Matlab is becoming less and less my primary platform for scientific computing and algorithm development, and more often than not just a target for deployment (meaning re-writing whatever project in the M language) because the customer/client is using it, or because a particular toolbox is a time-saver. I remember the days of yore, when Matlab looked like a hammer and most problems looked like nails. Now I feel that the handle of the hammer is a Baroque wooden carving, richly ornamented, weighting 120 lbs... More surprising is the strange comfort of spending so much more time working with Mathematica's superhuman -indeed extraterrestrial- capabilities for algorithm development and testing, and the "translating" to Matlab upon request. I guess necessity is the mother of strange companions...

[Oliver Woodford]

Commoditization is an excellent point. It should be an answer by itself.

Answer 15

[David Young]

The inputParser / validateattributes / validatestring collection of function parsing and checking tools.

• You have to write too many lines of code to do even simple things.
• I haven't done any testing, but I wonder about the overheads: all that object, anonymous function and cell array construction and access.
• Despite the complexity and apparent power, there are silly limitations. For example, required arguments must precede optional arguments must precede name-value pair arguments. Given that there are validation functions, there's no need for this.
• There was an absurd change of name of one of the methods of inputParser from addParamValue to addParameter . The documentated functionality appears to be the same, so there was no need for the change, but this is the biggest cause of users of old versions to run into trouble with my code on the FEX.
• The functions don't work nicely together. For example validateattributes always throws an error for invalid inputs, rather than returning a result. That means that you can't combine two calls to it into a single expression for a validation function (e.g. my input could be empty, or a row vector of length 3). I can work round this with a wrapper function that catches the error; but integrated design would have avoided the need.
• Another failure to integrate functionality: validatestring can handle abbreviated inputs nicely, but if you use it as a validation function for inputParser the information as to which possible input whas given is lost, and you have to call it again on the parsed results.

There's more to say, but I hope that makes the point. There's a strong case, I think, for starting again in this area, or failing that for offering a migration route to functions that do work together properly.

[Chad Greene]

Agreed on all counts. I've made a few attempts to use the built-in input parsing functions, but they're awful. They're unintuitive and incompatible across versions. Manual parsing can be a pain, but at least if I design the parsing myself I can have control and confidence that it will not throw errors.

[per isakson]

Shameless ad: My FEX contribution InputPreprocessor is an effort to solve most of the items on your list. I've used InputPreprocessor on a regular basis for some seven years (with a few updates) and I still thinks it is useful. Yes, it adds to the execution time.

[David Young]

Thank you per, I shall look at it. (I'd still TMW to improve what they provide, of course.)

[Steven Lord]

Do you find the function argument validation functionality introduced in release R2019b to be an improvement?

[Andrew Janke]

I don't know about David, but I find your new function argument validation feature to be a big win, and am switching to using it a lot.

My only real complaint there is that the one-arg datetime(x) constructor treats numeric inputs as datevecs instead of datenums. Datenums are more common in all the Matlab code I've seen. So you can't do this and have it work right:

function fcn(dt)
  arguments
      dt datetime
  end
  [...]
end

And that there's no single value that you can pass in explicitly to a function to mean "I'm omitting this argument; just use the default", which happens a lot in my codebase because we have functions with like 8 positional parameters and you might want to only specify values for parms 1 and 7.

Answer 16

[Knut]

The fact that once you schedule a low-level function, you cannot in any way stop it. Such as conv(zeros(umpteen,1), ones(umpteen,1)). A big red, working "stop" button would have been nice.

I like to run my scripts, insert break-points, then test stuff using command-line on the variables available. In recent versions, I have not been able to define new variables that way easily, having to declare them as global (??)

I would have really liked the core matrix-syntax to be even cleaner (not having scalars being 1x1 2d arrays for instance).

I would have liked some sort of extension of the matrix syntax into tensors.

I really hate the frustration when I go from compact, vectorized, readable MATLAB-code and have to dip my toes into "real" programming languages, where you spend most of your time concentrating on the implementation instead of the functionality :-D

[Steven Lord]

For the first point, this won't work for all "low-level function"s but the Pause button in the Editor, introduced in release R2016a, may be of use to you as may the Array Size Limit preference introduced in release R2015a.

Yes, I know I'm responding to an eight year old message. I just noticed it and wanted to add the relevant information in case others had the same frustration.

Answer 17

[Chad Greene]

I'd like new installations of Matlab to be able to grab preference settings from previous versions installed on my computer. It's minor, but spending 20 minutes sifting through M-Lint settings and fonts and background colors is just enough of a hassle to keep me from upgrading twice a year. I wish upgrading Matlab were as easy as upgrading Firefox.

[Chad Greene]

Alternatively, Matlab could simply adopt my default settings as its default settings for everyone.

[Sean de Wolski]

MATLAB does grab settings for the previous release. I.e. if you skip a release you lose this benefit.

You can also always try copying the prefdir from an old release to a new one. It often works.

And I think they should just adopt my settings for everyone!

[Chad Greene]

Ah, good thinking Sean!

[Matt J]

MATLAB does grab settings for the previous release. I.e. if you skip a release you lose this benefit.

This sounds like it would apply, though, only when upgrading on the same computer. I'd like a way to export preferences to a different computer. The prefdir approach sounds like it's worth trying, but maybe not bulletproof?

[Sean de Wolski]

Matt: If you want to be absolutely sure: before installing the new release on a different computer, copy the previous release's prefdir onto the new computer. Then the new install will find it and do any bit of magic necessary to protect against the bullets.

[Jan]

@Chad: FireFox?! A newer update installed the bloatware "Pocket" on over 100 computers in my institute. So especially FireFox is a bad example.

[Cedric Wannaz]

"Alternatively, Matlab could simply adopt my default settings as its default settings for everyone."

Chance is that we all have the same kind of settings-fine-tuning-mania, which makes us highly incompatible on that matter. Plus I don't like this pink "handwriting" font that you are using :-p

[Sean de Wolski]

Cedric, this discussion never took off but you can already see that only my settings should be everyone's defaults :)

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/10515-desktop-layout

It might be nice though to have multiple options beside the default that you could pick in the layouts tab.

[Cedric Wannaz]

:-D well, if it takes off, it will probably converge towards nothing (which, in some sense, is more painful than diverging), exactly like those threads titled "What is best, PC or Mac?". Well, now that I read you argument about Macs hiding windows, I see that there may be some underlying correlation ;-)

I am strongly for undocking the editor by the way and for minimizing everything else so we have only the command window and nothing else. The vast empty white remaining area can then marvelously stimulate our creativity .. until the first error message strikes .. . This is exactly why I'd push for disabling errors in the default setup!

PS: ok, I though about it and the best option is to set the error messages color to white. This makes the whole thing more peaceful, without altering the functioning:

[Serge]

I have spent days synchronize MatLab preferences and shortcuts across computers... and the process still confuses me!

Note: I despise the ribbon ( a waste of screen, particularly on a laptop ) so I hide it and use ‘Quick Access Toolbar’. I also rely on docking (editor + figure + command line). However it is not possible to add figure commands to the quick access, so I spend hours hacking figure shortcuts (zoom, etc) with icons, which kind of works. But then copying the shortcuts to another PC is almost impossible! One has to copy all the icon figures and FavoriteCommands.xml, MATLABDesktop.xml, MATLABQuickAccess.xml, matlab.settings, etc from C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\MathWorks\MATLAB\R2018a, and then fix the shortcuts to point at the icons… argh!

What I have so far:

.

1. There needs to be a sync option for preferences and shortcuts using the MatLab account through the web.

2. Also an option to export/import all preferences and shortcuts as a file.

3. Allow user to add figure icons to the quick access toolbar.

4. Allow user to use classic toolbar (ie pre ribbons).

[Walter Roberson]

As I answer questions about a wide range of releases, I sometimes use one of the pre-ribbon releases. These days, those feel pretty harsh on the eyes!

[Rik]

I would agree. I started with Matlab just before the ribbon was introduced, and at first I thought it was superfluous, but now it just feels part of the look of Matlab. It does add an easy way to get to often used controls.

RE space issue: I have my taskbar to the side, and I have an IM program docked, so my usable area is close to 4:3 screen ratio, which I think is way better.

Answer 18

[yunhui zhou]

1. Mathworks hides the direct download link for update release since Matlab R2018b, and force regular users (not license administrators) to update the software by clicking the bell-shaped button within the software.
2. I cannot use Matlab anymore when it is downloading the update release.
3. The download speed from my lab to the Mathworks's server is awful.
4. I have serveral Matlab installations (same version) to maintain in my lab, and without an offline update release installation package, they all have to download the same update package and go through this awfully long update process. I have no idea why the Mathworks thinks updating within the software is the optimal experience.

Solution for anyone suffering from this:

The update package for Matlab R2018b can be directly downloaded at: https://www.mathworks.com/downloads/web_downloads/show_updates?release=R2018b

The update package for Matlab R2019a can be directly downloaded at: https://www.mathworks.com/downloads/web_downloads/show_updates?release=R2019a

Answer 19

[Jan]

"load file.mat" saves 3 keystrokes compared to "load('file.mat')", but I've spent more than 600 keystrokes in answering desperate question in CSSM, Answers and goMatlab about using a variable as file name.

The HELP text of SAVE and LOAD explains the needed arguments explicitely. Therefore it is not Matlab, which frustrates me in this point, but the fact that a lot of Matlab beginners are overstrained by the tricky and actually not useful feature of non-functional forms of commands - and that even a good help text cannot intercept these problems.

[Steven Lord]

At some point between 2011 and now, the help text for save and load now mention the command form of the functions and state that users should not use the command form if the filename is a variable. The documentation now includes the same caution in several places (in the Description section and in the description of the filename and variables input arguments.)

[dpb]

But who actually reads the documentation is the problem often...or at least far enough down to get to the admonition (or having done so, at their stage of familiarity w/ ML and programming in general often, actually understands what they're being told)?

[Rik]

I would suggest adding an m-lint warning for this syntax, but I doubt that would be implemented, and I doubt it would help (for the reasons dpb mentions).

Answer 20

[Royi Avital]

• The lack of built in 64 bit compiler (MATLAB used to work with Photoshop out of the box).
• The graphics stack performance. It's so slow!
• Editor - I wish the editor could add rich text editing capabilities for code documentation (Adding LaTex, Graphs, etc...).

[Jan]

And the editor needs a block selection.