[jghn]

> R feels like a language that was built for people who were using excel

The S language predates the first release of Excel by 11 years.

> and which becomes literal baggage trying to use R

I've had the opposite experience. My experience was that having a broad array of programming experience made it easier to pick up the weirder corners of R. It became more likely that I'd seen *something* similar to that construct in the past. The converse has also been true. Seeing all the weird corners in R has made it easier to pick up new concepts in other languages & paradigms as it's been more likely I've seen *something* similar from R.