I can&#x27;t disagree more with a blanket statement like that. I would never recommend Python &#x2F; R to the physicists and scientists that I work with. They don&#x27;t know how to program well. The code they put out is usually garbage, hard to read, and fragile. Software development is not something they do. Backing up for them is emailing themselves a .zip file of their work and revision control is saving their DocXs and PPTs with different dates in the filename.<p>My point is, coding is not something they enjoy, or care about, it&#x27;s just a means to an end. The environment and tooling around R&#x2F;Python still cannot compare to Matlab in terms of ease of use, for the things that Mathworks (creators of Matlab) care enough about to write a toolbox or gui wizard for. The value is not in the language, or syntax, but in the libraries and tooling. I don&#x27;t know a single Matlab user who doesn&#x27;t make heavy use of the toolboxes Matlab sells.<p>And this is why I believe Matlab is not going to go away. If being free and flexible was all that mattered, Linux would have arrived on the desktop already.