I always thought R was a vestigial artifact of the bad old days of computing that had no place in the Real World (tm), but then I had to use it for a graduate-level data analytics course for business students.
And then it all made sense. Non-coders equate R with RStudio to the point that they don't really get that R and its editor were separate concepts, and therein lies the power.
Everybody uses the same IDE and it always works. No more figuring out why the language server isn't offering completions or wondering why ESS has such awful defaults.
R (and the tight integration with RStudio) makes it very easy for non-programmer types to conduct their own sophisticated exploratory analysis and to produce good looking plots without mucking about in Excel.
And then it all made sense. Non-coders equate R with RStudio to the point that they don't really get that R and its editor were separate concepts, and therein lies the power.
Everybody uses the same IDE and it always works. No more figuring out why the language server isn't offering completions or wondering why ESS has such awful defaults.
R (and the tight integration with RStudio) makes it very easy for non-programmer types to conduct their own sophisticated exploratory analysis and to produce good looking plots without mucking about in Excel.
I still hate the `<-` assignment operator though.