I disagree. As a software engineer, R is a nuisance, it's a terrible language, and I hate doing complicated things in it.
But it's very powerful, it's exactly right for these use cases and its ecosystem is mindbogglingly huge. Also, it tends to be easier to grasp for folks who don't have prior programming knowledge (anecdotal, but I've seen people pick it up very quickly who struggled a lot with, say, Python. And Python is the only language/ecosystem that comes close to R.)
So, yeah, a lot of languages could be used for the use cases in TFA, but R is uniquely suited, weaknesses notwithstanding.
But it's very powerful, it's exactly right for these use cases and its ecosystem is mindbogglingly huge. Also, it tends to be easier to grasp for folks who don't have prior programming knowledge (anecdotal, but I've seen people pick it up very quickly who struggled a lot with, say, Python. And Python is the only language/ecosystem that comes close to R.)
So, yeah, a lot of languages could be used for the use cases in TFA, but R is uniquely suited, weaknesses notwithstanding.