Let's put things in perspective: R is S and S had it's first appearance in the 1970s. It's current reincarnation is from the late 1980s. I remember that other s

Let's put things in perspective: R is S and S had it's first appearance in the 1970s. It's current reincarnation is from the late 1980s. I remember that other statistical packages back then had a similar looking syntax. This is also the reason why lua/python stand no chance against R: they simply lack the vast abundance of statistical packages and tutorials. The best thing they can do is use R as an inferior process (IIRC there is a package for incanter that does that). The point is though that S/R isn't that badly suited for what it was created for. There are a few pitfalls but those are explained in the langage definition. But unfortunately nobody RTFM nowadays (like people used to do back then in what you call the dark ages) because it's easier to start screaming for Mommy and write stupid blog posts that prove nothing but that those people haven't read the language definition. And BTW, python sucks.