GNU Octave
Serious Question.....<p>Matlab usage is on a dramatic downswing from my vantage point in quantitative fiance.  I don't really know anyone under 40 who uses it anymore as one of their main tools.<p>And I've never once seen anyone use octave as a substitute, I'm guessing this is mostly due to money for licenses not really being an issue.<p>Nowadays, the only tools I see people using are R, python(pandas, numpy) and very occasionally Julia.<p>Where does this leave Octave?  What's Octaves niche?<p>Or put another way, why learn Octave/Matlab when there are other languages out there that provide similar capabilities and that are much more popular?