An additional note for posterity here...one of the main reasons Microsoft was interested in acquiring Interactive Supercomputing was that ISC developed it's own

An additional note for posterity here...one of the main reasons Microsoft was interested in acquiring Interactive Supercomputing was that ISC developed it's own M-language (Matlab) compiler M# built on Mono/.NET...basically a faster Matlab replacement than Octave, using features like multiple dispatch. One of the primary developers of the M# compiler at ISC was Jeff Bezanson, co-creator of Julia. Exie used a bit of code from M#. When Exie was cancelled, the libraries were given a C#/F# facelift as Cloud Numerics, which was eventually cancelled, and then given a GUI facelift as part of the initial version of AzureML. Disclaimer: I previously worked at Interactive Supercomputing, was part of the team acquired into Technical Computing/HPC at Microsoft, and also worked at Julia Computing.