Re:Matlab/octave (Score 2, Interesting)

Off on a tangent... You mentioned Mathematica, I've found at my University that many students got their first introduction to programming there, and continue to use it in research, in tasks it is arguably not well suited for. Mathematica is a good way to visualize math, and perhaps a decent intro to programming, but I'm very surprised to frequently find it used for extensive Monte Carlo simulations where floating-point calculations would be much faster and sufficiently precise.