As a single piece of anecdata, this is exactly what prevented me from using the free licenses I had through my university to learn these programs. After my experiences with Stata, seeing the non-affiliated prices and having to do my work in a computer lab instead of on my own laptop, I didn't want to be tied to software that I might not have access to in the future, and that I couldn't share with other people.

The one time I made a handsome demo in Mathematica, I realized that there was no straightforward way to share it, so I gave up and redid it in R.

I'm grateful I never spent time learning those programs. I still miss Mathematica now and then, but free software is the only way to go for me nowadays.