Scilab

Scilab for windows: Nerds, Rejoice

The Open Source, Number Crunching Beast

So, Scilab. If you've ever felt like Excel was just a sad little spreadsheet and not a real number crunching beast, Scilab basically shows up like, "Hold my beer." This thing's open source, free (shoutout to GNU public license), and honestly? It's a lifesaver for anyone swimming in a sea of data and equations especially if you're chained to a windows machine. Scilab Enterprises keeps this bad boy updated, and the latest windows drop even got the nod from some highly qualified tech whiz in the States. (Yes, tested on the ancient relic known as windows XP SP3. Respect.)

The User Experience: Pros and Cons

People using Scilab? Yeah, they've got opinions. The interface is actually pretty chill, not one of those "designed by robots for robots" nightmares. You get built in science y apps, so you're not stuck Googling "how do I even math?" every three seconds, and the scripting language is a godsend for chewing through your bizarre piles of data. Still, let's keep it real Scilab's not perfect. If your data's all over the place, like some wild non normal distribution, it might throw a tantrum or two.

• GUI isn't a dumpster fire (high praise in this space)
• Handles heavy number crunching like a champ
• Not exactly thrilled about super weird data just saying

What About Mac Users?

Mac folks, don't pout. There's Scilab Express for OS X. Same core idea, just a little more "plug and play" for the casual crowd who don't want to spend their lives in the command line. It's got the graphical tools, it's got the scripting, but it's not trying to be a full on rocket science suite. You'll see it compared to SciCab for Mac another freebie scientists seem to dig. Both let you wrangle big, ugly datasets without going broke.

The Bottom Line

Bottom line? Try these out before you commit. No one wants to marry a software and realize three weeks later it can't even handle your weirdest CSV files.

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