I got a small hint for you if you use Matlab on a daily basis but still love your command line!
I am really not a IDE kinda guy and always try to avoid using a huge interface when an editor is enough. Personally, I haven't found a more powerful tool than the emacs/terminal combination yet.
In addition, the Matlab interface is fully coded in Java and is way too much ram-consuming imho. So I decided to get rid of it! Simply run
$matlab-nojvm-rscript//runwithoutimplyingthejvm
or
$matlab-nodisplay-nosplash-nodesktop-rscript
The result is a Matlab command line interface. You will simply have to use your favourite editor to create your scripts, and then run them using the command line.
The plots and figures will be displayed without any problem.
There is a small drawback however for Windows users : The autocompletion won't be available as it is a Java feature under Windows.
No problem under Linux (once again :p)!
Here is a screenshot of the result, so that you get the idea :
