[mmaul]

Lush is an excellent platform for machine learning. There are bindings to gnuplot ,opencv, lapack, gsl, an optimization library for gradient descent, a machine learning framework, a nerual network simulator.

It also has very nice matrix and vector manipulations features built in to the language and is very easy to bind to C code.

[iskander]

Some people really do seem to get a lot done in Lush, so I'm not discounting its utility, but the language is sort of a mess. I took Yann's class and gave up in frustration after a few homeworks. I was very happy working in Matlab and relieved to to never see a 'bloop', 'eloop', or whatever-loop again.

[mmaul]

Lush's purpose a little dfferent than Matlabs. The abstractions are a little lower level than Matlab for instance. But then again you you can compile your functions directly to machine code. There are trade offs to everything in life.

Matlab,Ocatave,R,S are great but if you need to be closer to the metal, Lush offers a very good compromise.