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I'm primarily a Python user and can say that there's no contest that R has many packages that Python does not have an equivalent of yet. This includes stats stuff and especially finance/trading. Definitely not a showstopper for me but if I were to recommend one or the other to people at work with no programming skills, I would have to choose R for the breadth of existing packages.

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>>but if I were to recommend one or the other to people at work with no programming skills, I would have to choose R for the breadth of existing packages.

My 2 cents: If someone has no programming background, then building a foundation from python will allow them to do much much more than building a foundation on R--unless of course they only care about statistical analysis and have no inclination to code more generally. I learned both at the same time even though I had no use for Python at the time (was and still am a professor) but I use it almost everyday now and very much enjoy it!

Agree completely. Should have qualified that with most at my spot/industry(finance) would be using it as an Excel replacement and just want to get things done; hence the value of existing packages.

thank you for your reply

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