I'm in agreement with most of the things you said, and I wasn't really meaning to advocate for Matlab; but rather just to point out another reason why someone might choose it. I used it in college, and at one company I worked at. It was much nicer to work with than LabView. I appreciated the hand-holding I got from Matlab, but eventually became competent enough to do my job in several languages, mainly Python.

>I just dislike contributing to the market share of software I could never afford to run on my personal computer.

I agree and that's one reason I tend toward OSS in courses I teach now, unless there is no practical alternative.