Allow me now to put on my professors hat. (Well, where I come from we only call the head of a department Professor, but hey!). No, I am not currently teaching, but in the past I have taught in electronics, mathematics and physics, in all of which I am well qualified.

Sadly I consider many of my academic colleagues (but by no means all) shockingly undereducated and capable of exhibiting a considerable lack of academic rigour. If he said you may use 'any language' then that is the end of it. In some Universities mentioing a preference for a commercial product would actually earn him a warning from the Dean or the ethics committee. Neither is ignorance any defence for his action, if that were the case.

HOWEVER - you must remember one thing. The vast majority of those teaching undergraduate courses will not thank you for rocking the boat! They are not (in their own ever so humble opinions) there to encourage you to explore, to push back any boundaries or to innovate. They want little if anything more than to get through their teaching load as quickly and as easily as possible to make available as much time for their own research or consulting activities. Be a renegade (I always have been!) but be prepared to fight the laziness and prejudice of your teachers. Sadly, over the last thirty or so years University undergraduate teaching in North America is being treated more and more like high school than university learning.

jdtoronto

PS Go and have a look at PDL - the Perl Data Language at http://pdl.perl.org. It is actually quite useful and I find it has far fewer bugs and idiocies than Matlab for the DSP simulation that I have been using it for.