> Most of the R devs I know like this are just butthurt they are paid less and refuse to switch because they’re obstinate, or they’re a little scared they’re being left behind. first group is all over the place, but the second group tends to skew older of course
Look, I started with R and use mostly Python these days, but this is not really a fair take.
R is (still) much, much, much better for analytics and graphing (the only decent plotting library in python is a ggplot clone). The big change (and why Python ended up winning) is that integrating R with other tools (like web stuff, for example) is harder than just using Python.
pandas (for instance) is like an unholy clone of the worst features from both R and Python. Polars is pretty rocking, though (mostly because it clones from Spark/dplyr/linc).
It's another example of Python being the second best language for everything winning out in the marketplace.
That being said, if I was starting a data focused company and needed to pick a language, I'd almost certainly build all the DS focused stuff in R as it would be many many times quicker, as long as I didn't need to hire too many people.
Look, I started with R and use mostly Python these days, but this is not really a fair take.
R is (still) much, much, much better for analytics and graphing (the only decent plotting library in python is a ggplot clone). The big change (and why Python ended up winning) is that integrating R with other tools (like web stuff, for example) is harder than just using Python.
pandas (for instance) is like an unholy clone of the worst features from both R and Python. Polars is pretty rocking, though (mostly because it clones from Spark/dplyr/linc).
It's another example of Python being the second best language for everything winning out in the marketplace.
That being said, if I was starting a data focused company and needed to pick a language, I'd almost certainly build all the DS focused stuff in R as it would be many many times quicker, as long as I didn't need to hire too many people.