The first references of Octave date back to 1988 when people started thinking about it as a brilliant complement for a university book about chemical reactor designing. From there on, its development has moved forward without stopping until it has become one of the best mathematics programs.
An open-source alternative to Matlab
This software, that in reality is nothing more than a set of libraries to carry out calculations, and obtain numerical, graphical and simulation results that can later be analyzed. To do so, Octave includes some applications for this specific purpose.
One of the applications it includes is gnuplot, a software application by means of which function graphics can be generated and that integrates perfectly with the development language proposed by Octave.
To launch any instruction, Octave provides a command-line terminal that allows interactive and batch launching with ease.
The programming language used in Octave is C++ and it also allows the STL library, but the truth is that the syntax in which the applications are programmed and how the calculations are carried out is very similar to MATLAB, considered as the commercial equivalent of this application.