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> it doesn't help that almost nobody learned R as their first computer (as opposed to statistics) language.

Aside from two statisticians I had as professors, I am yet to meet someone with deep understanding of statistics who doesn't speak R as first language ...

I found it way easier to grasp the meaning of statistics by playing with R than by reading the maths.

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I used RStudio to work through problem sets, textbooks, and ideas constantly during my time as an applied math student. My concentration was stats, but still found RStudio invaluable for pretty much every math class I took. I say RStudio specifically because it offered the complete package for what I needed at the time. Built-in graph viewing, workspace management, etc. As another commenter said, pretty much the best graphing/scientific calculator I could ask for.

You’re right, but I’d would think in recent years most stats people would have python as their first language. It probably comes preinstalled on their OS at this point (not sure if this applies to windows outside of WSL yet.)

Python has a big advantage in deep learning but R still has an edge in classical statistics.

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