Which language interface is recommended to use when calling external library function (ITK, OpenCV)?

Still very new to MATLAB and to programming in general, I got stuck in understanding how to best make profit from what is documented in the official MATLAB documentation in the chapter Calling External Functions. I am by now not capable to judge which of the many offered pathways might be the most effective one to go for, in terms of how easy a pathway can be learned by a beginner and which one could on the long term most easy and clear in the MATLAB code be applied over and over again.

To put it in a very practical question: as, for instance, the third party image processing function libraries ITK or OpenCV provide Java, C++, C and Python interfaces, and MATLAB has functionality to address such interfaces, which interface should a beginner in programming chose? Is one of them usable in a clearer laid out design and thus easier to get warm with and quicker to learn to apply?

I am afraid to now hear from everybody something like "well, it depends what you want to do", and my answer could only be "don´t know yet, I am learning programming and prefer to first gain some general success by going for the cleaner designed and easier to understand approach, and thus would like to get a recommendation where to start".

[Marco]

Please let me add this to my question and concerns: Highly respected Yair Altman states on his internet page "undocumentedmatlab.com" in the commercial for his "Undocumented Secrets of Matlab-Java Programming" book, that the Matlab programming environment would rely on Java for numerous tasks, including networking, data-processing algorithms and graphical user-interface (GUI). I derive from this statement that learning to specially connect MATLAB to JAVA will have significant advantages, THE MATHWORKS itself seem to have decided to take advantage of such connection when implementing MATLAB. But I can also see, that THE MATHWORKS by providing for MATLAB the MEX functionality seems to lean towards a tight C/C++ incorporation, providing also MEX besides the other possibilities to call external C functions. For me as a beginner it is now confusing to uncover which route of connectivity to external languages could be taken as the "standard" or "first to be recommended" one. Do any of you experienced programmers would have some arguments for me which route to first focus on? It is a long journey to learn programming, and I would not like to waste time on poorly recommended pathways.

Answer 1

[Marco]

I got some answers on Stack Overflow and a high quality advice from the MATLAB support team, regarding my question, and I would like to share them for others finding this thread: Connecting to external libraries for performance reasons would ask for the C/C++ MEX-file pathway, while the JAVA (or .Net, as well) pathway would be the easier one to learn.

In detail, and this is my personal view and conclusion concerning ITK and openCV, it appears that recently published offical MATLAB bindings to openCV by the openCV project itself are the promising path to go for, while the alike MATITK project doing so for ITK is on risk to get stuck in a dead end street due to the limited activity in the project.