c) Python is a rather nice language to program in, matlab feels archaic/verbose/... and misses a lot of things of more modern languages. It's good at math, but

c) Python is a rather nice language to program in, matlab feels archaic/verbose/... and misses a lot of things of more modern languages. It's good at math, but there it sort of ends. Also because it's aimed at math, good luck finding tutorials teaching programming basics, best practices, design patterns. Likely the reason why 10000 line files with up to 20 indent levels are no exception in the world of academia (ok the trainwreck of an editor might have to do with that as well). I have no proof of course, just a feeling this would occur less easily with Python. Ok and Python doesn't have numpy/plotting literally built-in but if you start with Miniconda or so you get one package which has it all.