I had a discussion the other day on the re-appearing topic why one should learn R …
I took the list below from the R-Bloggers which argues why grad students should learn R:
- R is free, and lets grad students escape the burdens of commercial license costs.
- R has really good online documentation; and the community is unparalleled.
- The command-line interface is perfect for learning by doing.
- R is on the cutting edge, and expanding rapidly.
- The R programming language is intuitive.
- R creates stunning visuals.
- R and LaTeX work together — seamlessly.
- R is used by practitioners in a plethora of academic disciplines.
- R makes you think.
- There’s always more than one way to accomplish something.
This is a great list – I would add that from the perspective of an university it makes sense to save a lot of money in not having to buy licenses. And reproducability is great with R because the code is always written in a text-file and not bound by software versions (as in other three or four letter (feel free to combine from: [A, P, S]) packages).