in terms of interface, it has more in common with mathematica (both good and bad) than do the APL style languages, basically the language semantics are C style

in terms of interface, it has more in common with mathematica (both good and bad) than do the APL style languages, basically the language semantics are C style with dynamic shape checking for array operations and a nice syntax for many different linear algebraic operations. It'd be nice if there was a nice type system to aid in getting comfortable with matlab's semantics, in my opinion