The issue was never the syntax—it was the runtime. Why readable math still matters in a world aided by LLM-assisted code generation
The enduring relevance of MATLAB in modern engineering
If you look at the most preferred language list on any Stack Overflow developer survey, you will usually find MATLAB hovering near the bottom. It sits there alongside VBA and COBOL, often dismissed by modern software engineers as a dinosaur. You have probably seen the memes: complaints about license manager errors, the massive install size, or the feeling that it is a language strictly for "old-school academics.”
The world has moved toward open source, containerization, and agile cloud deployments. In that context, a closed ecosystem feels restrictive.
But if you walk into the R&D departments of top aerospace, automotive, or medical device companies, MATLAB is still everywhere. It isn't there because these engineers don't know better. It is there because, for a specific type of work—linear algebra, signal processing, and control theory—MATLAB did one thing better than almost anyone else:
It made the code look exactly like the math on the whiteboard.
We need to separate the language syntax (which is excellent) from the runtime and business model (which are dated).
What is "whiteboard-style code"?
When I say "whiteboard-style code," I am referring to a specific level of abstraction. In engineering, the "truth" is derived on a whiteboard or a notepad. That is where the physics is worked out. You draw matrices, you transpose vectors, and you define relationships ($F = ma$, $V = IR$, $Y = Hx$). The goal of engineering software is to translate that whiteboard truth into executable logic with as little "translation loss" as possible. "Whiteboard-style code" means:
High Density: One line of math equals one line of code. Visual Similarity: The code visually resembles the equation. Low Boilerplate: No memory allocation logic, no type declarations, and minimal imports. For vectors, matrices, and arrays, MATLAB’s syntax is often the shortest distance between the board and the running code
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