{"id":4131,"date":"2026-02-04T09:26:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T14:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/matlab\/?p=4131"},"modified":"2026-02-04T09:26:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T14:26:29","slug":"when-and-why-to-adopt-software-development-workflows-in-matlab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/matlab\/2026\/02\/04\/when-and-why-to-adopt-software-development-workflows-in-matlab\/","title":{"rendered":"When and Why to Adopt Software Development Workflows in MATLAB"},"content":{"rendered":"

TL;DR<\/span><\/h2>
Michelle Hirsch, MATLAB Fellow and previously head of product for MATLAB, has <\/span>written a guide for reluctant developers<\/span><\/a> detailing which tools (in MATLAB and otherwise) you should consider adopting for various use cases.<\/span><\/div>
If you only take one piece of her advice, I suggest that it is to use Git Version Control; either using <\/span>MATLAB's built in, and recently enhanced, git-integration<\/span><\/a> or the more hardcore command-line way.<\/span><\/div>
Trust me! Future-you will thank you.<\/span><\/div>

I am a reluctant developer<\/span><\/h2>
I never wanted to get into software engineering. Way back when I was working on my PhD in physics, what I wanted to do was physics. There were problems I wanted to solve, phenomena to understand and equations to crunch. Learning how to program was a means to an end. All I wanted to do was get the computer to do what I asked, to help solve the physics. <\/span><\/div>
I didn't <\/span>want<\/span> to learn about version control, unit testing, coding standards or package management but, 26 years after I started that PhD, these are among the things I've found myself learning and using regularly. Not because I wanted to but because I needed to.<\/span><\/div>
I am, and always have been, a <\/span>reluctant <\/span>developer<\/span>. <\/span><\/div>

Drowning in the fire-hose of good advice<\/span><\/h2>
I didn't learn git, for example, because I was fascinated by distributed version control systems based on directed acyclic graphs. I learned git because I had reached a point in my programming journey where I needed it; desperately. I had many problems for which git was the obvious solution but it was a long time before I took the plunge and actually learned it.<\/span><\/div>
Why did it take me so long to start using something I so obviously needed?<\/span><\/div>
I remember being overwhelmed with advice from 'proper' software developers. Your problem, they told me, is that you're using the wrong programming language on the wrong operating system and employing the wrong design patterns. You aren't using version control, unit testing, release management or code coverage tools. Your numerics suck, the code is inefficient and you're using the wrong editor. Oh, and the way you name your variables is laughable! <\/span><\/div>
I wish I could tell you that these were my only problems. They were not! <\/span><\/div>
For any one of the many things that I was apparently doing wrong, there was a lot of conflicting advice on what 'right' looked like. <\/span><\/div>

Advice from one reluctant developer to another<\/span><\/h2>
Like me, MathWorks' Michelle Hirsch was a reluctant developer too. She has spent most of her career designing tools to help us reluctant developers do what we need to get done. For many years she was head of product at MathWorks and is now a MATLAB Fellow and Programming Interface Design Coach.<\/span><\/div>
<\/span>\"\"<\/img><\/div>
Michelle knows the MATLAB ecosystem better than almost anyone and one of her latest projects is to offer some advice on which MATLAB development tools you might consider using at various stages of your development life.<\/span><\/div>
I like to think of it as 'Just Enough Software Engineering to Perform'<\/span><\/div>

The software development tools you need, when you need them<\/span><\/h2>
Michelle has broken her guide down into 3 different use cases: <\/span><\/div>