Programming languages usually have arrays, not matrices, and I think row-ordered array data has been a natural way to think in many fields (e.g., databases, finance, etc.), especially when you consider that adding a row ought to be less burdensome than adding a column in these contexts.
I see, thanks I guess you're right. I'd been thinking of languages with matrices that support matrix operations but yes I think perhaps I'd been missing the point you make that it would be confusing for those to be list-of-column if list-of-row is used elsewhere in the language. It's a bit of a shame for working with matrices.
