> There are so many ways to write R that can actually be very fast.

But it means that you have to work with arrays. For me it often means breaking the flow of my (code) explanation to migrate to other data structures. Sure it is then fast, but it gets less readable and harder to update.

Now, I'm a programmer at heart, so I think in the "functional" paradigm, not the array/signal one. There's some "impedance" I guess :-)