SIOC 221A:  Software Options


Historically, SIOC 221A has used Matlab (http://www.mathworks.com/), and the UCSD site license makes this available to you. Instructions for obtaining the new licenses:
You are free to choose any software package or combination of packages that you like, provided that you can carry out Fast Fourier Transforms, work with complex numbers, and plot results. The most viable alternative to Matlab is Python, which is a freeware, modular, object oriented programming language (http://www.python.org/).  Other resources:
Octave: a freeware imitator of Matlab, uses almost the same commands.   (http://www.octave.org/)
Scilab: another freeware imitator of Matlab (http://www.scilab.org/)
Fortran, c, or c++:  compiled languages.  Run faster than Matlab for some applications,
Lapack/linpack:  Fortran-based matrix inversion packages. (http://www.netlib.org/lapack/)
csh, awk, perl:  Non-compiled scripting languages.  Sometimes very efficient for transforming columns of numbers.  (Not good for matrix inversion.)
GMT:  Generic Mapping Tool.  Free unix command-line software developed for geophysical graphics. (http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/)
If you are new to linux and shell programming, the Software Carpentry linux/unix tutorial offers a quick overview. Software Carpentry also has tutorials on Matlab, python, and version control via Git, among other things.