Separate namespaces for function names and data variables is a feature inherited from Lisp which is the language R evolved from. Not really a quirk. Common Li

Separate namespaces for function names and data variables is a feature inherited from Lisp which is the language R evolved from. Not really a quirk. Common Lisp and Emacs Lisp also have separate namespaces, while Scheme has a single namespace. The thing about a lot of R code not being written by programming specialists is a valid point, but then again not many programming specialists are also specialist in statistics so... the alternative is what?