MathWorks is used extensively by professional engineers as a design tool. One of the products that caught my eye was SimuLink which is a visual programming environment. SimuLink can be used for a wide variety of design problems but of particular interest to me is its use for Software Defined Radio. SimuLink has strong ties to hardware manufacturers (Xilinx, etc.) so it is possible to create a visual SDR design and then download the design into a suitable FPGA or SoC (System On a Chip). The team at MathWorks are very keen to encourage youngsters into hardware programming and have recently added SimuLink modules for the Raspberry Pi and Arduino. A great place to see some examples and to keep up with the developments is through MathWorks MakerZone. It’s still early days but there’s huge potential here.