The alternative to Matlab is not necessarily another programming language. Often, it's a purpose-built tool that maybe has some basic scripting built in.

That's what confuses software engineers about Matlab. They see code and think that the work is software engineering, but that's not always the case.

Imagine the reverse scenario. The professor sees you crunching numbers in Python and tries to convince you to switch to Matlab because it's "better". But you're a software engineer, and you still have to do all your software things that Matlab isn't great for. Why would you be interested in it?