[baldfat]

The issue isn't "Professionals" it is domain specialist. In the past data specilist didn't have Computer Science specialty. They were awesome in stats and numbers but lacked strong programming skills.

Hadley Wickham is special because he has both the stats, data science AND programming skills.

data.table is also an amazing library. R to me is the most improved language in the history of programming languages over the past 5 years.

Also R allows anyone with basic hackery R skills to create libraries easily and that is why so many of them are not optimal.