Context:

MATLAB is a programming language vastly used in scientific and engineering domains by engineers, scientists, and researchers. Still, MATLAB seems to be perceived as being used mainly by non-professional programmers, not taking full advantage of MATLAB’s features (e.g., OOP-support). The current state of the art does not seem to verify these assumptions.

Objectives:

Our goal was to fill the gap in the characteristics of the MATLAB community and its users, how proficient they are with the MATLAB, and what is their satisfaction level.

Methods:

We performed a survey with 212 valid responses, aiming to characterize the community of MATLAB users and clone languages. The survey was published on several platforms, including Reddit, Linkedin, and MATLAB Central.

Results:

There is a balanced distribution across different levels of experience in the community. (12.74%) of our sample uses MATLAB only through the command window. The more users expect other people to use their programs, the more effort they will put into making the code easy to understand, maintain and reuse. The use of OOP is not widespread (22%). The majority of MATLAB users are satisfied with its modularity support.

Conclusions:

Our study provides insights into MATLAB’s use patterns that are potentially useful for entities responsible for MATLAB’s future evolution.

中文翻译：

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调查 MATLAB 和克隆语言的用户社区

语境：

MATLAB是一种被工程师、科学家和研究人员广泛用于科学和工程领域的编程语言。尽管如此，MATLAB似乎被认为主要由非专业程序员使用，没有充分利用MATLAB的特性（例如，OOP 支持）。现有技术似乎无法验证这些假设。

目标：

我们的目标是填补 MATLAB 社区及其用户的特征、他们对 MATLAB 的熟练程度以及他们的满意度方面的空白。

方法：

我们进行了一项包含 212 个有效回复的调查，旨在描述MATLAB用户和克隆语言社区的特征。该调查发布在多个平台上，包括 Reddit、Linkedin 和 MATLAB Central。

结果：

社区中不同层次的经验分布均衡。(12.74%) 我们的样本仅通过命令窗口使用 MATLAB。用户越期望其他人使用他们的程序，他们就会越努力使代码易于理解、维护和重用。OOP 的使用并不广泛（22%）。大多数 MATLAB 用户对其模块化支持感到满意。

结论：

我们的研究提供了对 MATLAB 使用模式的见解，这些模式可能对负责 MATLAB 未来发展的实体有用。