[nomilk]

Before I knew command line, I tried to install python and spent the next 3 days resolving an installation issue with 'wheel'.

By contrast, from first downloading R to running my first R script took about 1 hour (the most difficult part was opening the 'script' pane in RStudio IDE, which doesn't open by default on new installations, for some reason).

There's huge demand out there for statistical software that's accessible to people whose primary pursuit is not programming/cs, but genetics, bioinformatics, economics, ecology and other disciplines that necessitate tooling much more powerful than excel, but with barriers to entry not much greater than excel. R is a fairly amazing fit for those folks.

[perrygeo]

R and CRAN really get package management right. Even as a very infrequent R user, there are no surprises, it "just works". Compare that to my daily Python usage where I am continually flummoxed by dependency issues.

[_Wintermute]

Strong disagree, there's a reason RStudio/Posit are spending so much time trying to develop 3rd party alternatives to install.packages() and CRAN.

Try installing an older version of a package without it pulling in the most recent incompatible dependencies, it's a whole adventure.