The language itself is awful.
(Source: I did a PhD using a mixture of Octave for numerical stuff, Perl for text-processing and automation, and C++ for the parts that were too slow. Choose the right tool for the job.)
Most people encounter large FORTRAN IV or FORTRAN 77 heirloom codes, and assume that's what Fortran is like in 2025.
As a programming language freak, I must disagree... in what other programming language can you solve a linear system Ax=b in one line
x = A\b
I never used any official matlab "toolbox", but still love the language via the octave interpreter. It's so clean and straightforward!
Why does this matter in the least? Like you must understand that this is a library call right? Like just put `import numpy as np` in your PYTHONSTARTUP and it's the exact same UX in python.
https://docs.python.org/3/using/cmdline.html#envvar-PYTHONST...
Not a general purpose one, but good enough.
Also, qalc from libqalculate for trivial stuff.