I’ll second this, though with some hesitation. If you just want to get stuff done, start with tidyverse. But if and when it’s time to start writing classes and packages, you may have to go back and gather some of the fundamentals.

I agree with both you and GP. Doing heavy stats work in base is pointlessly painful.

Hadley's Advanced R is a great reference for getting down to those fundamentals.

https://adv-r.hadley.nz/