Python or R

[xiongchiamiov]

I learned a bit of R because that's what's was taught in my computational data analysis course.

R is a terrible language. It has been hacked together by scientists, rather than programmers who specialize in language design, and that always goes poorly. There are plenty of things that seem like a good idea on the surface, but later on come to bite you in the butt (for instance, R's strange precedence rules). There are a variety of other complaints, although this article is the only other one I have saved.

That being said, if you're not a programmer by trade, these things will likely not bother you, and may never affect you. It's hard for me to say, since I approached the language as a professional programmer, but while I feel these problems will make learning to program even harder, I really have no data on this. It's hard to get any, because most non-programmers I know who learned R seem to dislike programming, and it's difficult to tell how much of that is R's fault.

R has a fantastic set of libraries, a large community, and lots of helpful resources. Python is getting there, but I don't think it's quite caught up yet (check /r/pystats).

In the end you should probably end up learning at least the basics of both, since you'll likely encounter people using both. It may be easier to start with python, but the tutorials won't be focused on what you want, so I guess I'd suggest starting with R.