octave: matlab's cousin

since we all like free things, and open source, here is the link to matlab's cousin, octave:

http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/

i've never used it, but i'd feel like a stud if i knew how.

GNU Octave is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides a convenient command line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a language that is mostly compatible with Matlab. It may also be used as a batch-oriented language.

...There were still some people who said that we should just be using Fortran instead, because it is the computer language of engineering [if you were born in the 1800s], but every time we had tried that, the students spent far too much time trying to figure out why their Fortran code failed and not enough time learning about chemical engineering. We believed that with an interactive environment like Octave, most students would be able to pick up the basics quickly, and begin using it confidently in just a few hours.

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Somebody needs to kill FORTRAN, okay? I guess if I actually knew that language, I could help the world be free of it. But I don't, I just like to make disparaging remarks about it. In ~10 years I'm going to be one of those old folks who still tries to hold on to the technology/software/languarges that I learned in my youth. I already feel sorry for myself now.