In an ideal world maybe, but in reality if the fraction of (hours invested in actual project)/(hours invested in fixing tooling, write high quality easy to use

In an ideal world maybe, but in reality if the fraction of (hours invested in actual project)/(hours invested in fixing tooling, write high quality easy to use libraries for data visualisation, data import / export, linear algebra, optimisation, statistics etc.) approaches zero, then a language probably won't be used. Also in this case the syntax of Matlab and the convenience with which you can manipulate indexed expressions with it, would probably not easily trumped even by a dsl embedded in Lisp, not without significant investment in developing such a domain specific language.