I could imagine that proper Lisp-like metaprogramming might come in handy. R can do metaprogramming, but it's quite tricky, even with all the tidyeval tooling.
Curious to know what you/others consider to be R's warts? I have my own gripes with it, but mostly love it. I ask because it's interesting to learn what's missing form a language, what other languages do better, etc.