I don't intend to downplay either Stata or SPSS for exactly that reason - they're very good at what they do. However, they have a limited scope (which isn't a b

I don't intend to downplay either Stata or SPSS for exactly that reason - they're very good at what they do. However, they have a limited scope (which isn't a bad thing), and if you want to go beyond it, you have to turn towards other options (e.g., R for extensibility, or Julia (or C, or whatever) for performance).