Considering the recent trends in electrical engineering and new emerging topics in electrical engineering and considering the multidisciplinary areas of research (esp. smart grid), all electrical engineers must have a good command of programming. In this respect, taking into consideration both the academic and industrial requirements, which programming language would be the best choice and why?
MATLAB may be essential. A public-domain tool that comes close to MATLAB is "octave."
In addition, you may need some other packages.
General-purpose languages such as C, Python are always useful.
Often, a single programming language may not be sufficient.
For modeling and simulation you can COMSOL Multiphysics software. It is very useful for electrical designing and modeling.
Thank you all for your kind responses. I already have a good command of GAMS, MATLAB, and DIgSILENT Powerfactory and relatively C.
What is your opinion about Python and its applicability?
All the answers so far are valid in the sense that learning a programming language helps to break the problem down to the component steps required to achieve an objective. It depends on what you want to do.
For algorithm development the MATLAB script approach works. For system studies then PSCAD / DigSilent etc are useful.
For some applications a logic based ( e.g. prologue) or stack based (forth) language may suit better.
Python helped me a lot until now. It is relatively easy to learn, has an awesome community around it and you can prototype things quickly.
Althought you trade execution speed for development-speed, by using Python. There are methodes to speed up the few comutational intensive lines of your program in order to reach almost-C-speed.
Since you work with PowerFactory, you can automate every routine in Python without using the kind-of-oldshool dpl language.
Especially for the automatic analysis of large structured data (pandas-package), python would be my nr.1 choice.
Python is also a good "glue"-language to build a toolchain from existing code.
One of the best ways to start python ist www.learnpython.org there you can interactively try and learn the basic syntax and concepts without any installation-hurdle.
Hope it helped :)
I'm thinking of migrating to Python. There are already several mathematical libraries tested.
Python would indeed be the best to start with. Most electronics such as the Raspberry pi mini computer is based on python scripts and you can do numerous automation projects with it.
For smaller micro controllers though such as the Arduino, venturing into C and C++ languages would be the best way to start.
Python is good in the creation of functions and scheduling activities, it ties into other languages well. However, it won't do the detailed engineering work - it will automate the activities but will still require something else to do the number crunching.
I will recommend C especially if you are considering programming microcontroller or for more advance industrial application you can learn embedded linux. Though python also work with some microcontrollers like rapsberry pi.
Mr. Nezhad,
It completely depends on the field of application. MATLAB is one of the very broadly use software and is transferable to various field of applications.
However, if you would want to work with computer aided design application- COMSOL or SOLIDWORKS
Embedded Systems: RTOS, embedded linux etc., Rapsberry Pi is anytime one of the powerful micro controllers.
Considering programming- python is used in various domain these days.
It will depend on what is the field of application.
The software products we have for WAMS applications( GE e-terraphasorpoint, e-terra phasoranalytics) use c# and c++.
Our EMS products also use C++.
For UI related applications, Java is used.
MATLAB for sure hence it's Avery powerful tool especially simulink
hello
it depends on your project, for example, power electronic engineers could use "c" because they need to build an experimental plan and almost microcontrollers support c language.
Thank you all for your useful answers.
Best regards,
Ali Esmaeelnezhad
For optimization problems, I think Matlab,Python, Julia and GAMS may be used .
For embedded systems and micro-controllers, matlab as well as "c" can be used.
I would recommend MATLAB or C++. Every other language can easily be learnt from the basics of those two.
I would recommend python. It's readable, free, and arguably the fastest growing programming language
It is quite large field of applications and it depends on the purpose of doing it. For example, for electrical power, MATLAB and PSCAD is user friendly and MATLAB can be interfaced with python for another purpose of applications. However, other software may not have this opportunity for doing this sort of simulations.
I suggest Python, because this is a powerful language and you can use to develop programs for data analysis, IoT and others, the biggest companies use this and you should also. MATLAB is essentials for you academic formation.
MATLAB and C/C++ combination would be a good start for learning new programing languages for EE and beyond.
I think C and MATLAB... These two are very helpful programming languages for electrical engineering
MATLAB ...very easy tool to conduct simulation studies...after successful results hard ware can be implemented.....chances of desired output of hard ware is bright
I suggest python 3.x, which is free, very good for automation and linking different programs, nad has lots of free packages. Try to instal anaconda at first.
For foundation, C
For getting actual work done, MATLAB and Python
In my opinion you have to start with fundamental programming with any programming language. C used to be very popular for this but python is rising as the go to language for starting programming.
Additionally MATLAB is very important for an electrical engineer. For advanced task MATLAB is very important. Python can also be used for advanced real works.
As known, there are useful lots of software for a specific area in Electrical Engineering.
Mainly, in order to comprehend the algorithm concept, I think that at first it should be begun C++ based language. Maybe later MATLAB which is a high-performance software for technical and scientific calculations, mainly involving numerical calculation, graphical data representation, and programming. It is being preferred by industrial companies to solve their problems.
Also, the python language is being gained popularity and taught in the faculties of the Universities more commonly anymore with C based languages.
-- For power system analysis can be used ETAP, for utility transmission protection Aspen is the most used, for transmission planning, Siemens PTI and PSS or General Electic PSLF are both widely used in the industry.
-- For power system simulation software, RSCAD is designed specifically for interfacing to the RTDS Simulator hardware.
-- For power electronics, MATLAB and PLECS are highly recommended.
-- For electrical machines, Maxwell and ANSYS engineering simulation and 3D design software, preferred mostly in industry.
-- For renewables, there are lots of specific program such as EneryPLAN, NREL, HOMER, PVsyst, PV*Sol, RETScreen, or packaged software, etc. to simulate solar or hybrid power systems.
-- For measurement, processing, and instrumentation, NI based LABVIEW software can be preferred.
I think the needs in the industry and in the academy cannot be split up completely, because the hearth of the industry beats at Universities.
MATLAB and Python are good choices for their widespread applications in the electrical engineering.
I would recommend Python as another language to consider. There are many add on libraries, simple to learn and it is open source.
Python using Anaconda and Jupyter notebooks. Cython if you encounter bottlenecks in your Python code.
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