Sunday, September 25, 2011

Getting Started

First of all, I must admit that it took me quite some time even to consider switching from Matlab to Python. I've been working with Matlab for more than ten years, and I must say that it is an excellent tool for research. However, both in my professional and private work there where quite some cases where Matlab was not the best tool to do the job. This forced me to learn things like Labwindows and C# for gui programming, php for website building. Not to forget that Matlab is not a free (not as in speech, nor as in beer) product.
Still, the main reason for me trying to make the switch, is  Python being a 'swiss knife of programming'. It can be used to make excellent GUIs with Qt, conduct research with SciPy, program dynamic websites and so on.

All posts on this blog will be based on the following tooling:


  • As a base distribution I'm using PythonXY, which is an excellent package containing (almost) everything one needs to do scientific programming with Python.
  • To connect to Interactive Brokers you'll also need IbPy.