The reason I might find Mathematica interesting is its language, which I found to be on my popularity-brevity Pareto frontier.

https://danuker.go.ro/programming-languages.html#non-math-ma...

So, it can express an average Rosetta Code non-math task in ~180 bytes, compared to Python, ~270, or Java, ~420. I guess this is because of its vast libraries of "batteries included".

Where it all falls apart is sharing. Nobody can run my creation, and even Mathematica Home Cloud is $194/year, which I find pretty steep, being used to free & libre software.

Monetizing is a whole different story, with commercial licenses starting at $1620/yr, which I could only justify if I already had a team wanting to learn the language and a large-ish profitable business service whose source code I wanted to convert to a locked-in solution for some reason.

I bought a one time home license for like $200ish a number of years ago and it still works, and will likely work forever. I have transferred it between computers and even OSes over time. Worth it. I pay as much for JetBrains annuallt and way more for the Adobe stuff I use maybe twice a year.

Are one-time licenses a thing of the past ?

A permanent home/hobby license for Desktop costs $387, as far as I can tell. It only allows 4 cores being used, and for more you need to buy Core Extensions.

They do make some attempts on their web site to steer you into the yearly subscription, or into buying a yearly support contract if you do buy a permanent license, so some folks might not realize the permanent licenses are still available without a support contract.

They also run regular sales on all their products. Pi day is coming up.