I’ve taught R (and Python) to mostly non-programmer scientists as part of multi-day Software Carpentry workshops. Especially with R, I feel like most attendees

I’ve taught R (and Python) to mostly non-programmer scientists as part of multi-day Software Carpentry workshops. Especially with R, I feel like most attendees after a couple of days were able to do things that would be decidedly non-trivial in Excel. EDIT: emphasis on my original point of “past a low complexity bar.” If someone is looking to manually enter data and maybe sum a row or two, Excel is probably easier. I’d say at the point where someone needs to reshape data or do any kind of non-trivial formula, R becomes easier—certainly easier for me to imagine teaching.