Doing coursera stat one and R is pretty easy. It remind me of PHP. Syntax wise, I don't know why it's just a feeling. This article made it a bit clearer. OOP was an after thought...

I'm getting more and more into R now. Hopefully one day Python.

So I guess what I'm saying is I think it's R that I wouldn't be surprise and that I have to respectfully disagree with your Octave statement.