I am not developer by profession but have been programming since early 90s starting with basic, fortran, C++ and Matlab.
Learnt JavaScript, Python, Lua as well along the way for various reasons.
Found R when I was looking for something free alternative to Matlab and chanced upon R in 2010/11.
Now a days R is my goto scripting language anytime when I just want to get to the results and don't care about reproducibility.
I also use Shiny as alternative to multiuser scenarios involving spreadsheets since I when work in a financial firm where excel and VBAs still dominate most of the front office functions.
Sure Python could be good tool but once you become fluent with R ecosystem, moving to python just feels too much that can be done with few lines of R code.
For me the conciseness of data.table and ability to cook up shiny web apps with very few lines of code is biggest pull.
Found R when I was looking for something free alternative to Matlab and chanced upon R in 2010/11.
Now a days R is my goto scripting language anytime when I just want to get to the results and don't care about reproducibility.
I also use Shiny as alternative to multiuser scenarios involving spreadsheets since I when work in a financial firm where excel and VBAs still dominate most of the front office functions.
Sure Python could be good tool but once you become fluent with R ecosystem, moving to python just feels too much that can be done with few lines of R code.
For me the conciseness of data.table and ability to cook up shiny web apps with very few lines of code is biggest pull.