MATHWORKS Version release policy

Not exactly a Techincal question but just want to know your opinion.Do you also feel that Mathworks policy of releasing two versions each year is too much. I mean by the time you develop your expertise and get hands on a particular version, a new version gets released with new GUI and features. In Industries like Aerospace where development lifecycle is in years together, version management and support becomes a nightmare accross projects/cells.

[Adam]

Our company work in the oil and gas sector, which is notoriously slow at changing, but we still release software twice a year because a lot of work gets done in 6 months and companies will more likely buy competitor's software if we only release once a year. I imagine the same is true of Matlab. It is quite rare that there is any really major change in a Matlab update though. New features and functions get added, but significant changes to existing ones are relatively few. There has one been one very significant change to UIs in the 12 years I have used Matlab, when HG2 was introduced. Everything else is just incremental. Even stuff like appdesigner is an add-on as previous methods for creating GUIs still work the same.

I can't remember an occasion in Matlab where I learned expertise that then became irrelevant with the next release of the software. I don't use Aerospace toolboxes though so I can't speak for what changes have happened there.

You don't have to update to every version though. My colleague tends to be very tardy updating and often doesn't get around to it until the following version is out anyway!

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

My opinion is that it is fine as is. Industries that have very long lifespans need to develop their own in house version control standards anyhow, and those often have external constraints that are beyond anything Mathworks can reasonably be expected to control for. For example some industries require that programs not change for 30 years except through extremely rigorous testing and approval processes , and Mathworks cannot be expected to freeze development for 30 years.

Mathworks is in competition with other vendors that do not stand still for a year at a time, and needs to be seen in the market with visible continual development in order to be viewed as relevant and able to respond to industry changes instead of being a slow moving dinosaur .

[Raj]

Agreed but this policy has its own positives and negatives!!

[Walter Roberson]

I am not sure which products are considered to be the major competitors of Mathworks.

I tend to spend more time these days on symbolic work than on numeric work, and for that the two major competitors are Wolfram (Mathematica) and Maplesoft (Maple). Wolfram has an irregular release schedule that lately has been averaging about 3 releases every two years, but in 2015 they had four releases. Maplesoft has a major release every year and an important dot release 6 months afterwards (so really two releases per year) and as well updates their physics package multiple times per year.