title: Is Matlab (vs. C/FORTRAN) a respectable language for a professional mathematical researcher of the 21st century?
body: <p>I am a die hard user of matlab, mostly because this is what I learned first and I have not encountered a problem with a significant enough difference to switch.  I come from numerical optimization/linear algebra, where I have performed optimization and eigenvalue computations in millions of degrees of freedom.  Recently, I have entered the realm of randomness, where I was originally under the impression I would be forced to change.  But, after optimizing code, and carefully initializing the seed to the random number generator, I am able to do the same Monte Carlo tasks as my contemporaries in roughly the same time.  My understanding has been that base-level 'if' statements, etc., are significantly slower in matlab.  However, if there are significant computations within each loop which can be vectorized, I'm not convinced C would be better.  And, anyway, matlab seems to do just fine, in the sense that my upper bound is no less than any other professional (and in many cases, seems to be more).  I have a feeling that I will get lots of responses from pro-C people here, who have written off matlab long ago as some trivial toy language.  I am a professional researcher and contend that matlab is competitive for the highest level computationally intensive mathematical programming.  Am I wrong ?  Do I need to consider changing to a lower-level language, such as C/FORTRAN ?  Why or why not ? Are there others like me ?  Thanks alot!  Cheers</p>