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.
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.