[disgruntledphd2]

PSA: If you haven't already learned pandas, learn dplyr/ggplot2 instead. Yes, R is a pretty clunky language (but it's closer to lisp than pretty much anything else as popular) but ggplot2 and dplyr are 100% the best currently available way to visualise tables in SQL.

[r_power_user]

I would second the decision to use ggplot2 / dplyr, and would also add data.table to the mix. That combination has been invaluable for me, allowing me to visualize all of my structured data.

[optimalonpaper]

I started with R, but then switched to Python because all pipelines were already written in Python (web-scrapers, some data-processing scripts, REST APIs), so I just learned pandas and it's been fine, although I do think dplyr's syntax is great and I prefer it to pandas'.

[disgruntledphd2]

Yeah, totally. I spend a lot more of my time writing Python for anything that isn't data exploration/analysis, for exactly that reason.

I still refuse to learn pandas enough to replace dplyr though, as it's just so painful to use the API compared to how easy this stuff is in R.