> If both request significant compute allocations, and I see one is planning on MATLAB, and the other on PyTorch Lightning, I know for sure I would want to give the MATLAB users far less funding, or even none at all

I want to say the least offensive way possible that I really do hope you do not ever get to review NSF/NIH grants because of bias like this.

The example that you gave is/was also a solved problem in the HPC systems I used. SLURM/PBS, when properly configured, can ensure that local clusters do not spill over and not use resources that are not supposed to be used.

I picked an intentionally contrived case where MATLAB is undeniably a really bad choice here. Most real world situations are not so ridiculous and would not justify such a simple decision, but if you can't see that MATLAB wouldn't be a horrible choice in this specific contrived situation, I would suggest it is in fact you who has the bias. I agree in general anyone making funding decisions solely based on MATLAB vs. other is not to be trusted, but that is NOT the situation I so carefully presented.

And yes, clearly, based on what I linked, this MATLAB issue is a solved problem on Canadian SLURM HPC clusters too. It's just, so much more is solved by e.g. modern Python libs like Ray, Lighting, and etc., it is really silly to pretend that MATLAB users can as easily make as good use of HPC clusters as everyone else can, especially today if GPUs are involved.

I'm still going to upvote you here because I think you are engaging honestly and fairly, and we just generally disagree here.