Why is Matlab so popular in the computer vision community even with OpenCV being so complete?
I've noticed that Matlab is very popular among the computer vision and image processing community still to this day, even though OpenCV is a very mature package for C++.  I've never used Matlab, but looking at it I see no advantages over OpenCV in C++.  It's so commonly used however that I'm considering picking it up.

Why is it so popular among this crowd?  What are its advantages over OpenCV?
Why is Matlab so popular in the computer vision community even with OpenCV being so complete?
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I've noticed that Matlab is very popular among the computer vision and image processing community still to this day, even though OpenCV is a very mature package for C++.  I've never used Matlab, but looking at it I see no advantages over OpenCV in C++.  It's so commonly used however that I'm considering picking it up.

Why is it so popular among this crowd?  What are its advantages over OpenCV?