I'm about where you are at. I struggled with doing things in R for a year or so, while I was initially using it to do some cool graphics that I couldn't elsewh

I'm about where you are at. I struggled with doing things in R for a year or so, while I was initially using it to do some cool graphics that I couldn't elsewhere, following mostly by example. After spending enough time using it, things began to "click" for me, and now I prefer to do most of my work in R. I still struggle sometimes to write nice looking code in R, but I've known people who are pretty good at managing it. If you have to inherit an R program from someone else though, it's almost guaranteed to be a nightmare to comprehend.