To me the biggest value octave gives me is its ease of use. When you are trying to learn a new mathematical concept and are manipulating matrices and vectors, Octave/ Matlab is a breeze. Compared to other languages that require you to call the `dot()` function.

Additionally compared to python's matplotlib, Octave / Matlab's plotting syntax is much simpler. Not faster but its functional.

In short, its a great educational tool, prototyping mathematical / engineering models. Bad for production use where you are using the code base to actually solve an engineering / science problem.