R is mostly benefiting from network effects. Everyone in the life sciences uses it (I think economists mostly use Statista and engineers/physicists seem to use

R is mostly benefiting from network effects. Everyone in the life sciences uses it (I think economists mostly use Statista and engineers/physicists seem to use a lot of MatLab?), which means that all the things that they need get R libraries (and blog posts explaining how to do them, and publications validating their use, etc.). And the way that academic scientists work mean that most of the downsides of R don't actually matter. I will completely agree with almost any list of deficiencies that you come up with for R. But I will disagree that almost anything on that list actually matters for an academic lab using it to conduct analyses. As for it's use outside of academia, I couldn't comment.