R: plays nicely
One of the great things about R is that plays nicely with 'real' languages like C. Manage your data ingestion and basic manipulation in R, then when you need some heavy computation, like Monte Carlo simulation, pass the load onto a C routine. Then display the results graphically in R.
Another feature of R is that it itself has been wrapped into 'reproducible research', where R code is written in-line in text that is destined for human consumption, coded in markdown. Write the script, analyses and present the results, then 'compile' the report to produce HTML or PDF output. All the steps in data ingestion, cleaning and manipulation are embedded in the script so others can read the script and run it themselves. That's a great step forward for honesty in data analysis.