Matlab

I took me a while to realize why I reproduce results from articles in Matlab (and not in Java, Python or R).

Here are the reasons:

1. Matlab has succinct syntax for matrix operations, which is similar enough to equations in articles (this is where Java gets beaten).
2. It is extremely simple to get an example data from the article into the Matlab code - you just copy-paste the data from the table in the article, surround them in square brackets and that's it. You have a matrix. There is no need to separate the numbers with commas (but you can - they are optional). There is no need to separate the individual rows with brackets. It just works. This is where Python and R gets beaten.

Who would guess that great copy-paste support would affect the choice of the language...

Another nice thing is that Matlab (and R in RStudio) autocompletes paths to files and and directories - once again, it is a small thing. But it helps to avoid typos.