How is Matlab 2013a version better than Matlab 2016a edition?

I have Matlab 2016a installed on my device. I came in contact of another user who recommends me using 2013a edition as it is better than mine and 2016a is very complex. So I'm a bit confused about which one to use as I am learning to use Matlab .

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

• some people do not like the re-designed user interface that was after R2013a
• the redesigned user interface might take more computer resources
• starting in R2014b, the graphics system redesign was released. Someone who is accustomed to using the old graphics system might sometimes struggle with the new system
• there have been improvements to some of the linear algebra routines since R2013a. However, some of those improvements are less tolerant of singular or nearly-singular matrices than the older versions were, and the changes can show up in surprising ways. It is not that the newer routines are handling the calculations "the wrong way": it is that the older routines were giving seemingly valid answers that were not really justifiable for the poor matrices, so the problems were not as obvious before
• 32 bit versions of MATLAB are no longer available, with R2015b being the last one; this can be important on older systems (or systems that need an operating system upgrade.)
• The interface to data acquisition devices has been substantially re-written since R2013a, which can make it tricky or impossible to interact with some older devices, especially devices for which the manufacturer never created a 64 bit version of the driver

Thus, there are reasons why R2013a might be preferred. However, for someone who is learning MATLAB now, none of them are really relevant (unless they only have a 32 bit computer!) -- not unless they need to work with older software.

[Jan]

+1. There are several improvements also: The working with table, datetime and string objects might make solutions much easier in the modern version. The auto-expanding let the code looks much nicer than a bunch of bsxfun calls (but with the controversal effect that bugs might be overseen).

Createing code, which runs with the old "HG1" graphics of R2013a is a deadlock. If you use the older version, get familiar with the modern graphics also to write your code compatible. E.g. create a function function H=groot, H=0, end and use groot instead of 0 in the older Matlab versions.

I do not like the ribbons of the GUI and they still impede my work compared to the old menus. This was a bad decision of Matlab to prefer fanciness over usability. But this costs some seconds per day only.

I still have R2009a on my computer for productive work, because it is much faster for displaying graphics. The delay of tic; figure; plot(1:10); drawnow, toc is frustrating.

          1st call after start:   Further calls
  R2009a: 0.842503 s              0.157180 s
  R2016b: 2.893711 s              0.508572 s

For a complicated GUI with hundred elements and several 10'000 lines of code: R2009a: 3.1 s, R2016b: 8.2 s for the first call. For following calls the relation is nicer with 0.55 s to 1.1 s.