Because with R you can and usually do multiple things with multiple data sources within one session, which effectively dissolves the start-up and load time. Eve

Because with R you can and usually do multiple things with multiple data sources within one session, which effectively dissolves the start-up and load time. Even if reading one file and calculating mean or something with a single script is the only thing you do, you can use Rscript which runs R without loading heavy stuff like the methods package.