If it wasn't for the large swath of statistical packages, R wouldn't have much traction. I agree, but Community & Ecosystem are critical to any language's succ

If it wasn't for the large swath of statistical packages, R wouldn't have much traction. I agree, but Community & Ecosystem are critical to any language's success. R's community is great and getting better [1]. You could make very similar criticisms about JavaScript, which is a lousy language that has accomplished amazing things thanks to third-party extensions and a very active development community. [1] http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....