[R] R vs Matlab: which is more "programmer friendly"?

[Gabor Grothendieck]

Tamas Papp <tpapp <at> axelero.hu> writes:
> 4. How flexible are these languages when developing new
> applications/functions?  Very few of the problems I encounter have a
> ready-made solution in a toolbox/library.

You might want to check your assumption that what you need is not available.
I believe that there is more not in CRAN than in CRAN.  Henrik Bengtsson's
site lists 370 packages:
http://www.maths.lth.se/help/R/.R/doc/html/packages.html
You could try posting if googling and looking at the usual places, 
cran.r-project.org, www.bioconductor.org and www.omegahat.org, does 
not turn up what you are looking for.

Also, there is a document on the R site that
provides a translation between Octave and R that might give you some
insight into your questions:
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/R-and-octave-2.txt