The article lists a few things that you can do with R, but fails to make good on its headline promise: explaining why R is the best language for data journalism.<p>To me, and I think to many other people as well, the language most suited for anything data-related is Python, not R. I might be wrong, but If I am I won't know it after reading this article, because it doesn't compare R to other options on the table. R is only the best at something if it offers advantages over the other options, and to be honest I very much doubt that this is the case when comparing against Python.<p>Anecdotally, a number of years ago at university I took a class titled "Statistical programming with R" because I had heard good things about it and was looking forward to a chance to learn a new tool. Unfortunately I learned pretty quickly that I had to fight R every step of the way to get it to do what I wanted. Everything seemed arcane, convoluted, and complicated. Went back to Python and never looked back. I don't doubt that one can do great things with R, but the effort needed to get there simply doesn't seem worth it to me when Python seems so much more accessible.<p>Having said all that, I would be quite interested in a comparison of typical data science (or data journalism) tasks in both R and Python by someone who is good at both. After having read the article headline I had hoped it went into that direction. I was disappointed to see that it's essentially just a statement of opinion that isn't backed up in any meaningful way.