[patricklynch]

I think you overestimate the difficulty.

The Python programmers can probably step through R source code and figure out what's going on without too much trouble.

The other statisticians probably already know and use R.

The non-programmer, non-statistician, business types probably aren't interested in your source code--be it Python or R--and will want you to make pretty graphs and give presentations anyways.

[esbranson]

Probably. I think my complaint boils down to a complaint that every new language is so intent on using an uncommon syntax style for little if any benefit. To me, R is amazingly cryptic for what little it is trying to achieve.