It's this same reason that running anything that depends on R in production is a PITA.
Re:Why I use R
by FranzFerdiNaN on Monday January 06, 2020 @03:36PM
(#21973011)
I run R in production and its absolutely fine and wasnt harder than pretty much any other thing in software development.
I didn't suggest it was hard. I found CRAN repos to be insecure and unreliable.
I am not a R user (using primarily julia and python), but can you expand on the insecure aspect of CRAN. Do you refer to (potentially) missing package signing (similar to [1])? I am not aware that python or julia support this either. Or is the software download over ftp/http instead of https?
What also helps is that R is so focused on data and statistics. It gives a focus to the users that really helps when it comes to finding help. Python is famously second best at everything, but that also means it's community is spread thinner over more subjects.