Zoom R: why and for whom?

There are other high level programming languages such as Python or Julia, so when might it make sense for you to turn to R?

Here are a number of good reasons:

• Free and open source
• Unequalled number of statistics and modelling packages
• Integrated package manager
• Easy connection with fast compiled languages such as C and C++
• Powerful IDEs available (RStudio, Emacs ESS)

For whom is R particularly well suited?

• Fields with heavy statistics, modelling, or Bayesian analysis such as biology, linguistics, economics, or statistics
• Data science using a lot of tabular data

Of course, R also has its downsides:

• Inconsistent syntax full of quirks
• Slow
• Large memory usage