I find that programming in R is much nicer. I find that the language is more powerful and supports closures which is something I've always missed in Matlab. Extending R in C is also quite easy.
Its probably worth pointing out though that R is primarily for statistics. It walks all over Matlab in this domain (because most statistics researchers use R). However, for machine learning, signal analysis, system identification and working with ODEs I wouldn't be surprised if Matlab is easier and better supported.
Its probably worth pointing out though that R is primarily for statistics. It walks all over Matlab in this domain (because most statistics researchers use R). However, for machine learning, signal analysis, system identification and working with ODEs I wouldn't be surprised if Matlab is easier and better supported.