This paper reports on a collaboration between three authors; two mathematicians in a Swedish university and a UK-based mathematics educator. The focus of the enquiry was the evaluation of the experience of Swedish first-year undergraduate engineers required, in their mathematics class, to learn to use the programming language "Matlab". Students were interviewed and their responses compared with the intentions and expectations of lecturers. Students discerned a lack of clarity in course planning but also had many very sensible suggestions to make, the implementation of which would, they claimed, facilitate their learning.