Matlab is focused on a) Matrix manipulation but builds a lot on top of that such as Signal Processing, differential equations etc. and b) But at the end of the day it is a numeric evaluation language. Whereas in Mathematica everything is an expression and so it does most of its work doing symbolic manipulation until at the end you may or may not choose to evaluate an expression numerically. This allows it to have a whole other capability doing Symbolic Integration and Differentiation of very complicated expressions, Mathematical Logic, Abstract Algebra and IIRC Category Theory and such like. Don’t mean to be a hater but the MATLAB language and default environment feels clunky in comparison. An analogy I use often is that Python, MATLAB and Mathematica are respectively like Linux, Windows and the Mac, aesthetically and functionally. I have used MATLAB as well and their docs are good no question. But the native notebook interface and the “built in everything” environment means you can explore rapidly and run the example code without having to know which other packages you need to buy. So I would put the development experience with Mathematica a couple of notches above that of MATLAB. BUT in the engineering domain especially at Univs MATLAB is king. This is a flaw of Wolfram marketing and pricing not of the underlying product.