Hmm, this is an accurate description on how a lot of research work is run.But then there are the cases where that data analysis that was put together within a week is suddenly used by the whole research group, amended, extended and used with more and more data. Sometimes someone even sticks a GUI on top, plots and consecutive analysis steps are added, etc.
And this is when you really want to have a language that can be used to build up real abstraction.
And then you want to interface your code to someone else's, written in something that is not your pet language, and you find yourself spitting text or binary matrices through pipes. IME it's easier to decide on a data serialization format at the start, and use whatever language works best for each piece.
And this is when you really want to have a language that can be used to build up real abstraction.