Of course it's not only about the price. Open and free tools are important for reproducibility of research, including computer science research, economic research, etc.
Having open access articles/papers, we are now moving to open availability of data for reproducibility of results. Open tools are the third component, allowing a complete reproducibility of research, unencumbered by arbitrary lock-in.
It is then important that we teach and share open and free tool with science learners, so that as they progress they can freely share fully reproducible research, with anyone in the world.
[edit] in summary, in the age of open access, FLOSS science tools become a must -- and a collective responsibility.
The most important thing is giving brilliant minds the best tools, period.
If those tools make it impossible to share data, or publish results reproducibly, then I'd agree that those tools suck. However Matlab reads and writes every damn format under the sun.
Don't confuse "create, invent and build" with "export and publish." They're fundamentally different tasks.
I also spent more on video games in the last year than it costs. What's your point? That it's so cheap he should just buy it, even if there are better, cheaper tools out there? That seems like a waste to me.
I was refuting this silly argument: "Good luck once you're out of university and want to start your own thing, you won't be able to afford it."
Yup, startups have costs. Go figure. And sometimes you get what you pay for.
I wish I'd learned Matlab sooner. I still love the Python ecosystem, but Matlab's replaced a LOT of dicking around in Python for me. It does completely different things, and certain things are trivial or impossible in each place. Worth learning both.
