I am from 2nd year of mechanical engineering,.. So is it worth to study matlab software??? Because I don't know any of technical things so is this software useful for me at this point

Or I will study it later after 3rd year, What should I do???

[dpb]

What's your standard curriculum look like regarding it? In a second year surely by now you've had two semesters of calculus plus your first physics and statics will be beginning...??

Learning rudiments of computer programming and having it as a tool certainly can't hurt...

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

No. Or maybe. Don't bother learning a language that you have no immediate plan to use. You won't remember much when you do need it anyway. You could as well ask if you should learn French, German or Chinese. Hey, you might need to read a technical paper in that language one day.

Is facility with some programming language useful? Of course it is. But you can do a heck of a lot with just a spreadsheet. And do you need MATLAB to handle undergraduate level ME classes? Not really, and certainly none that I ever saw. Only for some of my graduate school ME coursework would MATLAB have been of any use anyway. For my thesis, yes. But you are not even close to that point.

There are many other things you would be far better off investing your time to learn in advance. For example, pick up a copy of the text for what you perceive will be your most difficult class from your next semester. Read it.

Knowing MATLAB won't hurt you. But you won't learn it very well unless you are using it. And you can learn it when you do need it, and if you really do need it, you will learn it very quickly.

[Walter Roberson]

Depends on the university. Some introduce MATLAB to ME even in first year.

[John D'Errico]

Yep. I know. And if you will need it for the program, they would tell you. So read the course descriptions for the classes to be taken in the next two years.

One of my graduate degrees is in ME. I would not have used MATLAB for all but one class, in numerical linear algebra, and even there, Fortran would have been sufficient, as was APL, as was Python. (There were three of us in the class.) Not until my thesis did I really have a need for the computational power of MATLAB.

I wrote one paper with my advisor, describing the out-of-plane deflections of a spinning disk (think of a hard disk platter) where all computations were done by me using a spreadsheet to solve the system of nonlinear partial differential equations involved. I did not need MATLAB there, although it would have helped, a LOT. :)

As I said, MATLAB knowledge will not hurt. It MIGHT improve the chances of getting a job at some companies, in case they happen to need an ME who also knows MATLAB. But not all students who emerge with an undergrad ME degree will use a tool like MATLAB in their careers. Many of those students will not even use what they learned, diverging into different areas. They might veer into tiers of management, where MATLAB knowledge might be an inefficient use of energy spent. This is more true at lower levels, where it can be difficult to predict a career path based only on a lower level degree.

But learning to use a tool that you currently have no interest in using and learning, just in case you might need it later is silly. The time and mental energy might be as well spent in learning any of a number of foreign languages, just in case you might use them too.

As I suggested, a far better investment of time is to read the description for the courses to be taken in the next year. Pick up the texts for those courses, and read the text. (I taught myself calculus one summer that way, then linear algebra a year later. I handed in all the homeworks on day 1 of the class. It makes the class itself a breeze later on.)

MATLAB is a great tool to know and use.

[Walter Roberson]

"But learning to use a tool that you currently have no interest in using and learning, just in case you might need it later is silly."

It isn't silly to me. I learn things because they are there. I might never have a use for whatever it is. Perhaps some day someone will ask a question on the topic and I'll have a clue how to answer. Perhaps no-one will ever ask about that topic, but the concepts might inform me about something else.

[John D'Errico]

Walter - the question was essentially, SHOULD the OP learn MATLAB for their program in ME, currently at an UNDERGRADUATE level.

It was not, "Should they learn MATLAB, because it exists?" In that case, arguably, it is just as important they learn Chinese, APL, Hopi basket weaving, JAVA, and German, Latin, blacksmithing, etc. That list of things that exist, and MAY prove useful to them at some point in their future, it will go on literally forever.

As I suggested, if the goal is to improve their capabilities in Mechanical Engineering, it is entirely possible that they will never need MATLAB, nor have any use for it. In order to know that, they need to do some research and see if it will be employed in their courses. If it would be, then of course they need to learn it, as I said several times. If not, then they will easily gain far more by pursuing other immediate goals.

For some reason, you are losing focus of the question, and instead directing this conversation into irrelevant areas where YOU personally care to invest your time. Feel free to state your personal opinions in your own answer.

[Walter Roberson]

It doesn't work that way, John. You are making claims and other people can comment on those claims.

MATLAB does get used some parts of Mechanical Engineering. See for example https://www.mathworks.com/academia/books/matlab-for-mechanical-engineers-dukkipati.html which discusses "problems in control systems, basic engineering mechanics, statics and dynamics, mechanical vibrations, electrical circuits, and numerical methods." or https://www.mathworks.com/academia/books/solving-mechanical-engineering-problems-with-matlab-nasseri.html which discusses "solid mechanics problems (statics, dynamics, vibrations, dynamics of machines, strength of materials, engineering materials, composites, etc.), and also thermal science problems (thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, etc.)."

Java also gets used for a number of those kinds of problems. At one time, APL was in active use in ME as well, but I suspect there is no longer significant use of it.

It is not uncommon to see undergraduate students asking Control Systems or FEM questions here.

I do not think it is "silly" for a student to learn a tool with relatively wide applicability to their chosen field. Tools such as MATLAB help frame approaches to solving problems, and learning that can be quite beneficial -- as beneficial as learning a particular technical topic in their field.

My housemate lectures and gives seminars and workshops and research studies on the process of learning at the university level. They find that the large majority of students are held back by not knowing how to frame questions, and by not knowing how to determine and negotiate expectations. They find that teaching framing techniques can help students more in their field than the student would gain by just taking an additional specialized course in their field.

Tools such as MATLAB can help to organize understanding of a field, so I do not think it is "silly" to learn them even in the absence of there being a particular course that needs them.

I do not think that everyone would benefit equally from learning MATLAB, and I think it is quite reasonable for each individual to examine their own needs and goals and decide upon their own priorities. I think it is quite reasonable for each individual to ask themselves what their purpose would be in learning MATLAB, and to ask whether their particular interests and time limits would tend to suggest doing something else instead. But no way would I say it is "silly" to learn MATLAB at that level: having learned MATLAB can make it easier to learn other topics.

I would assess that for me personally, the most important university course I took by far was the one on Formal Logic and Computing Theory (finite state machines, formal grammars, Turing Machines, Regular Expressions), and perhaps the second most important was Numeric Analysis. The two together explored the limits of what can be known, and what can be computed, and how accurately. Courses about how to think about computing. Frameworks, rather than technical matters as such.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

I do generally recommend learning MATLAB, resources permitting.

However, I acknowledge that technical mastery is not all there is to success.

I recommend that you read through https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1034844858475630592.html which is a discussion of what it takes to succeed in grad school in many programs. I do understand that you are not in grad school, but when you look at the thread you will see that there is a very heavy emphasis on human interactions.

This leads me to suggest that you try to figure out what kind of specialization within ME that you are interested in, and that then you research who is working in that specialization, and figure out what software they are using. All the better if it is someone local to you. And then familiarize yourself with that software: it will give you an advantage in going after intern and TA positions with them. One of the suggestions in the above discussion is that it can be very beneficial to ask for mentoring, so if you can identify people you want to work with, then you can talk to them and ask them what they recommend.

Consider too your goals in writing software.

Do you intend to "own" the software, keeping it as private as feasible to act as a gatekeeper of the solution domain? There is a lot of possibility for profits in such a position -- until, that is, someone writes something competitive. A controller of software can be a consultant in that topic. For software you control, you are interested in minimizing the effort you put into creating and maintaining the software, and you are also possibly interested in execution efficiency. MATLAB is good for prototyping, but could be stronger on large scale software. High efficiency in MATLAB can take some work.

Is your goal in creating software to distribute a solution to professionals and academics in the field? If so then you want something that is relatively easy for them to use, but flexible, and you might also potentially be interested in making it easy for other people to extend the software. MATLAB can potentially be good for these things, but if other people in the field are not using MATLAB now, they will probably not migrate to it in bulk just to use your software.

Is your goal in creating software to try to get it to as many people as possible, even people with low resources? I cannot think of an ME example at the moment, but an example in the field of Civil would be software aimed at helping even villagers design safe bridges. If so, then you would probably not want to use MATLAB: you would want to go for a solution that works on typical available hardware and software for your target audience.

[John D'Errico]

Walter, I did NOT inject my opinion of what you said in your answer. It may be relevant or not, but this question is purely one of opinion.