So apart from not really being about R, this author also seems to completely miss the point of scientific computing: it's not about having the cleverest languag

So apart from not really being about R, this author also seems to completely miss the point of scientific computing: it's not about having the cleverest language, it's about having a solid ecosystem and community building useful tools (e.g. RStudio). People work around language warts pretty easily, most people doing scientific computing just need to get shit done and don't give a rats arse about the programing language arcana.