nice list of R's WTFs. I've recently hit an issue that you access properties of "S4 classes" (what are those? "The S4 object system. R has three object oriented (OO) systems: [[S3]], [[S4]] and [[R5]].") using @ instead of $.

I think that the users/library creators are also guilty of why working with R is such a pain. Giving them the option to overload operator was a major mistake. C++ programmers are more often engineers who have more concern for the code reader and even they probably overuse it.