I pretty much had the same experience with R. I've never been able to get really productive with it as a software developer. I feel like I know too much and can't break from old habbits. It's very academic which I feel really holds it back from software devs and also captures non developers in it's web.

Whilst it's certainly got some runs on the board. I think having data science folk work in more standard languages would actually make supporting them and their needs easier.