[ACow_Adonis]

I'm not saying I'm doing it (although sometimes I will for readability, small problems that can't be naively vectorised, and where I have to make code readable for non-R people).

But not everything is naively vectorisable or best expressed as a vector operation, which is an idea that offends some R programmers.

The truth is a lot of real world analysis is done where the observation is the unit of natural analysis, and not the variable, and lots of people from other languages think in rows vs columns.

Common lisp realised this, and you've got there a language that allows for efficient expression of scalar, compiled loops, vectors and vectorisation/functional application, so I think this shows it's not entirely an either/or dichotomy in practice and is more about design/implementation choices and trade offs.

My point is not that R gets it wrong, it's that you can't say the R way is the "right way".