I hate to say it, but MATLAB is not bad. It's not great, mind you... I wrote a number-crunching app that required a 64-bit OS to run when I was in college, and I'm still pretty convinced I'd have gotten better results in good old C, but time was short and grades were at stake.

A lot of hardcore physicists and mathematicians are still flying the FORTRAN flag too.

I've used MATLAB in engineering classes, but for calculus level calculations we used Wolfram Mathematica

I'm one of the fans of FORTRAN. If you use complex numbers, it's very easy in FORTRAN. Output formatting, not so much.

Matlab is incredibly powerful for calculations involving any kind of matrices. Also, it's built in functions are faster than regular for,while, etc. loops.

What would the best computer language be to make Mathematical Calculations. I've done some JAVA programming but what are your ideas/opinion on the best programming language for making math calculations.