Mathworks/Matlab is heavily entrenched in the engineering departments of most US universities. So students get free Matlab access in the computer labs and heavi

Mathworks/Matlab is heavily entrenched in the engineering departments of most US universities. So students get free Matlab access in the computer labs and heavily discounted student versions (or pirated copies) on their personal computers. As a postdoc I attempted to push Python into the curriculum but professors are just much more comfortable with Matlab. I never met anyone who actually used Octave. Matlab's out-of-the-box IDE is good and makes debugging/profiling dead simple, the toolboxes cover a huge range of problem domains, and the language itself is easy to learn. But I've moved away from it due to the cost, licensing, closed source, etc. I use Python. I have an interest in Julia, but the language stability and ecosystem just aren't there yet.