there was a great keynote at this last useR! conference by John Chambers about how R's predecessor, S, was designed as an interface language (https://www.youtub

there was a great keynote at this last useR! conference by John Chambers about how R's predecessor, S, was designed as an interface language (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hcpuRB5nGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hcpuRB5nGs). He discusses how as part of it's fundamental cognitive model, it was there to provide a facile interactive "interface" to best-of-breed algorithms. Very few other programming languages have that pedigree, they were mostly designed to architect systems.