title: What is MATLAB good for? Why is it so used by universities? When is it better than Python?
body: <p>I've been recently asked to learn some MATLAB basics for a class.</p>
  
  <p>What does make it so cool for researchers and people that works in university?
  I saw it's cool to work with matrices and plotting things... (things that can be done easily in Python using some libraries).</p>
  
  <p>Writing a function or parsing a file is just painful. I'm still at the start, what am I missing?</p>
  
  <p>In the "real" world, what should I think to use it for? When should it can do better than Python? For better I mean: easy way to write something performing.</p>
  
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  <p><strong>UPDATE 1:</strong> One of the things I'd like to know the most is "Am I missing something?" :D</p>
  
  <p><strong>UPDATE 2:</strong> Thank you for your answers. My question is not about buy or not to buy MATLAB. The university has the possibility to give me a copy of an old version of MATLAB (MATLAB 5 I guess) for free, without breaking the license. I'm interested in its capabilities and if it deserves a deeper study (I won't need anything more than <em>basic</em> MATLAB in oder to pass the exam :P ) it will really be better than Python for a specific kind of task in the real world.</p>