Defending Matlab code in 2025 is like defending Emacs: it's not that you don't have logically good points, in many cases, it is just that you are so completely out of touch with modern advances, communities, and requirements that it isn't even clear that you are speaking to anything more than what amounts to a rounding error.

EDIT: Specifically, it is extremely hard for me to think that anyone should be convinced to learn Matlab in 2025 - this seems to be a statistically useless and obviously soon-dying skill. Any logical arguments about what Matlab offers NOW seem to entirely ignore - what seems to me - this obvious practical reality.