I would love to see them stack Matlab up against R, particularly with respect to the vectorised computation. I suspect Matlab would put up a lot more challenge

I would love to see them stack Matlab up against R, particularly with respect to the vectorised computation. I suspect Matlab would put up a lot more challenge to R in that regard. Never mind introducing GPGPU computation. When it comes to breadth of capability, R would not even give Matlab with its toolboxes a challenge. Simulink alone is huge in that regard. You pay out the nose for it though.