> code that is not very elegant nor easy to understand That was my impression when I started learning R while learning statistics - again, but this time with

> code that is not very elegant nor easy to understand That was my impression when I started learning R while learning statistics - again, but this time with an actual interest in the subject and not just for the grade :) On the other hand, the whole R-learning experience, which was aided by having to do practical "statistical" things in the language and working with actual data, gave me a new perspective on programming, a much more data-oriented perspective if I may call it that. Before (learning R and statistics) I was interested in the code and what it could do, afterwards (but only for those kinds of applications) I was interested in the data and what I could do with it, the "how" was secondary. From that perspective I understood a lot of the (IMHO) "hacky" nature of R and some of its libraries.