Besides having to take a class in Matlab in college, back almost 10 years now. I have never used it for anything. Recently, I have been seeing Matlab being a requirement for new jobs. Is it a language I should learn? What is the benefit of it? And can code be easily dropped on micro-controllers?
Dig
Matlab is a set of tools for various tasks that involve math. It can be used in pretty much every engineering field, works under windows, linux and mac. And as previously said it's industry standard, so it's being taught in schools and used in many companies. Matlab itself is programming language (initially was created to replace Fortran in interfacing numerical libraries) and environment (editor, set of reusable functions, GUI tools etc.). I know that Matlab is widely used in applied mathematics, control engineering and signal processing. Mathworks use a slogan "The Language Of Technical Computing". In my faculty (control engineering) knowing matlab (and simulink) is a basic skill. Cost of matlab license is proportional to it's possibilities.
Generally matlab can generate code, but it's more useful for prototyping rather end-user solution. For example when I was testing such feature matlab instead of making simple loop, made 500 if statements 
I am sure that compiler optimised code but such code is far from being human-friendly. It should be mentioned that mathworks created "matlab coder" feature in latest R2011b release which is supposed to make code production process better (check: http://www.mathworks.com/products/new_products/latest_features.html#). Using matlab for programming MCU's is hard and code is far from being optimised.
Generally knowing matlab is a good asset, but if you are into electronics and you are not involved in serious signal processing it may not be needed (please note I am just a student).
Matlab is a set of tools for various tasks that involve math. It can be used in pretty much every engineering field, works under windows, linux and mac. And as previously said it's industry standard, so it's being taught in schools and used in many companies. Matlab itself is programming language (initially was created to replace Fortran in interfacing numerical libraries) and environment (editor, set of reusable functions, GUI tools etc.). I know that Matlab is widely used in applied mathematics, control engineering and signal processing. Mathworks use a slogan "The Language Of Technical Computing". In my faculty (control engineering) knowing matlab (and simulink) is a basic skill. Cost of matlab license is proportional to it's possibilities.
Generally matlab can generate code, but it's more useful for prototyping rather end-user solution. For example when I was testing such feature matlab instead of making simple loop, made 500 if statements I am sure that compiler optimised code but such code is far from being human-friendly. It should be mentioned that mathworks created "matlab coder" feature in latest R2011b release which is supposed to make code production process better (check: http://www.mathworks.com/products/new_products/latest_features.html#). Using matlab for programming MCU's is hard and code is far from being optimised.
Generally knowing matlab is a good asset, but if you are into electronics and you are not involved in serious signal processing it may not be needed (please note I am just a student).
