This actually could work reasonably well:
Source: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/events/escience2012/Bill_Howe.pdf
Other links:
- http://yetanothermathprogrammingconsultant.blogspot.nl/2009/02/timing-of-sparse-matrix-multiplication.html
- when reading this I was reminded of a similar strange project: a Basic interpreter in TeX (http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb11-3/tb29greene.pdf)