For the first 3-4 years of my professional life I used only R and loved it, it was a gentle introduction to programming.<p>But this last year I've switched to python and just love it. I feel like I was walking around with my eyes closed before.<p>Is there ANY good reason to keep using R going forward?
I can think of one specific reason why some people might prefer R. This is my understanding anyway... I'm not an R specialist, so sanity check what I'm about to say as you see fit:<p>AIUI, most professional statistics researchers use R, and as a result, the newest, latest & greatest statistical techniques and algorithms pretty much always get implemented in R before any other environment. So IF your use case involves needing to be <i>very</i> close to the bleeding edge of modern statistics research, then R could have a compelling advantage.<p>Otherwise, I guess it's down to personal preference. I dabble in both R and python, and neither strikes me as perfect. I go back and forth depending on what I'm doing.