Matlab is a categorical loss due to its proprietary character, R debatable, Julia, maybe yes. Octave, while at least not proprietary, still surely not, if the task is anything but some matrix multiplication or matrices using program.
julia has an unacceptable overhead when running small programs. it works well for longer running workloads or extended interactive sessions, but for learning you want to be able to write and execute small scripts without feeling the perceptible lag every time. google up "time to first plot" for more on this.