[throwaway4007]

R has always been relevant and isn't going away any time soon. The language is ugly and flawed and has a bunch of quirks and gotchas but there are just too many libs.

Also for a lot of people R is going to be the first and often only language they're going to learn because they have no use for programming outside of statistical analyses and it's damn practical for that single use. Right now generations of students are being taught in R, right now bioconductor is booming and being added to everyday. That stupid arrow assignment operator has plenty of good years ahead of it.