<p>Hey I'm a HS senior, plan to major in engineering(have already been accepted to Gatech) I'm planning to download MatLab(Kinda want to get a head start in college). Does anyone know of any site with good video tutorials for beginners? </p>
<p>Thanks! :)</p>
<p>Are you expecting to use Matlab so soon?</p>
<p>Dont waste your time getting a head start, you’ll just get frustrated. Your engineering program will teach you what you need to know for MATLAB. I’ve been using MATLAB for 2 years in grad school and I still hate the thing and still dont know how to do a lot of things.</p>
<p>nkhlgeorge, I am intimately familiar with matlab, simulink, stateflow and several toolboxes associated with it.</p>
<p>There is plenty of help that comes bundled with matlab. That should be more than sufficient.</p>
<p>If you have the time, learn the gui builder using guide. Send me a PM if you want more details.</p>
<p>I’ve used matlab for one semester and hate it. Enjoy your senior year and summer instead of possibly learning something you may not even need.</p>
<p>I love matlab. It is very easy to learn. Very useful tool if you do EE. My only annoyance with it is that array indexing starts with 1 (Fortran legacy). btw, if you don’t want to spend the money, you might want to try FreeMat. It is very nice.</p>
<p>[Introduction</a> to Matlab for EE103 Students](<a href=“http://home.earthlink.net/~brien/IntroToMatlab.htm]Introduction”>http://home.earthlink.net/~brien/IntroToMatlab.htm)</p>
<p>Thanks everybody.
I also wanted to know how MatlLab intensive is ME(undergrad)</p>
<p>Regarding your choice on MATLAB: In my opinion, F# is far superior to MATLAB. With F#, you can even communicate with Mathematica, which is probably the best mathematics software around. [MathGroup</a> Archive: August 2008 [00519]](<a href=“http://forums.wolfram.com/mathgroup/archive/2008/Aug/msg00519.html]MathGroup”>MathGroup Archive: August 2008 [00519])</p>
<p>My cousin attended GA Tech last year and she had to use Python. I don’t know if the standards changed or anything, but good luck!</p>
<p>thanks. Come to think of it even I’m not too sure whether MatLab is used at Tech, I presumed it was a widely used software in engineering.</p>
<p>Ahh, vectorize that For loop!</p>
<p>Seriously, don’t worry about it. MATLAB is used widely in industry, but wait for your class to teach it to you properly. If you really want to learn it, take a class in it, don’t teach yourself.</p>
<p>Matlab is used all over. In undergrad ME you won’t run into a ton of situations that require it but there will be a ton of instances where it can benefit you. You will find it is used at most universities and many companies as well, so it is a good thing to know.</p>
<p>In response to F#, not only have I never heard of it being used in any engineering sense, I haven’t even heard of it. Mathematica is really nice but is a different type of software and it won’t be nearly as useful as Matlab for most people, so it hardly warrants learning an obscure language like F# that is really not going to be nearly as useful to an ME.</p>
<p>I would second the notion that waiting to learn Matlab until you get to school isn’t a terrible idea. This is your last “free” summer. Enjoy it.</p>
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F# is another metoo garbage from microsoft.</p>
<p>Whether you use MATLAB will depend largely on your college. I use MATLAB in ChemE, but it really is not a hard program to pick up on. I would suggest, as others have, to just wait until you know what you will actually be using it for. “Getting a head start” won’t really help you that much. Also, I don’t think MEs will be using it enough that you would even need a head start. Just my opinion.</p>
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<p>As an ME/AE, I can tell you the opportunities to utilize Matlab are essentially endless.</p>
<p>My son learned Matlab as part of a summer enrichment program. He is a freshman mechanical engineering major, and has not learned it yet. He is in a computer honors program that taught him Fortran this semester, and he will learn C++ next semester. One of his intro engineering courses used Excel, and the second half will only do more Excel. He will possibly learn AutoCAD as part of his graphics course next year. </p>
<p>I do not think he will have a formal class in either Java or Matlab, so I’m wondering if it would be worth his while to take a summer course in them if he doesn’t get exposure to either of them by his junior year. </p>
<p>In looking at lots of job offerings that he’s interested in, it seems Java and Matlab are big plusses, and I fear he’d be ineligible for these positions if he doesn’t have exposure to them because of the undergraduate school he chose.</p>
<p>Montegut, I am confused. If your son has learned Matlab then why do you say that he doesn’t have exposure to it? </p>
<p>Learning matlab basics is not that hard if you already know how to program and I feel it is not necessary to take a class in matlab to convince potential employers. In most schools matlab is introduced as part an engineering course like control systems or digital signal processing.</p>
<p>On top of that, your son’s school likely teaches Fortran instead of matlab, as they are used for a lot of the same sorts of things. Fortran is actually faster than Matlab, it is just more involved with fewer predefined functions without installing packages. Despite being old as dirt, Fortran is still used quite a bit in industry and even in academia.</p>
<p>Sorry for the confusion. Son did a summer enrichment program where he did research, and as part of his research, he learned matlab. So it was not a formal course on a transcript that indicates he took a course in matlab, where he got a grade. He got the matlab program, a manual, and even programmed in matlab. Similarly, his Fortran course is part of an honors program, where it is not specifically a Fortran course on his transcript. I’m concerned that employers will want to see a transcript that says, Matlab 101, or Fortran 101, for example. If he can just put on his resume that he is familiar and has programmed in Matlab and Fortran, would that be sufficient?</p>
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<p>I think so. What I have seen people do is list the languages in the summary part and again mention them in the description of projects in which they were used.</p>