Kudos to all contributors. Learning R and using it was a lot of fun and really satisfying experience. Great option for someone like me, who has to do some basic analysis of large data sets without rich statistical background.
Did you learn R for your own fun or just to upgrade your skill set and get a job?
...better set of options:
1. for fun
2. get a job or job done
3. all of above
In my case it was Q vs R. For what I was trying to achieve and with my level of statistics background R was an obvious choice.
The language/runtime AND RStudio are entirely free. Give it a try!
kdb+ is the only tool I've come across that solidly managed to outperform data.table for data processing. I have huge respect for good Q programmers
Likewise. A good kdb dev is a very rare and intelligent beast, hats off.
I'm just too stupid to be able to comprehend much of Kx's ideas and so R was just much more appealing to me.
In my experience even bad Q programmers can outperform. The language and underlying engine is pretty efficient...