That's funny, I absolutely never use '<-'. Mostly because it's 2 characters, and because it's inconsistent with most languages. Haven't ever run into any issues because of '='.
I like your base R point, although like you say, some packages are simply essential.
- For assignment, always use '<-'. Read it as "set to". For example, "x <- runif(10)" means "set x to a vector of 10 uniform random numbers". When passing arguments in function calls, use '='.
- If the IDE gives you problems, try using the command line. R Studio or the R GUI app are not necessary. Simply type 'R' in a shell and you have an interactive read-line environment. Use the shell for exploratory work, then write code in your favorite editor and copy/paste after developing a series of commands you want to run.
- Use base R as much as possible, don't install a new package just for one function that you could do with base R functions, even if it's not elegant. Package bloat is one reason for inconsistencies in APIs. Some package developers will make you do x.getValue() and others getValue(x). But remember these are 3rd party packages. You can do a lot using just base R and a few select packages that are well respected (gglot2, dplyr, Hmisc, reshape).