All good points.
The reason why JHU taught its older Data Science MOOCs in R is really only known to J. Leek and R. Peng. As far as I know this has not been discussed. The rest is speculation. Although, I think you are correct to speculate that it comes to personal preference & biases.
I have taken several of Leeks MOOCs and it's funny to note that he does not use ggplot2 (and the tidyverse, I believe) as much base R graphics. He says that base R is much simpler, easier and more productive. That is something I knew a long time ago. It may not be pretty but it damn well gets the job done.
Back to my point(s); For me the question (Now) becomes did they think R will progress and stay extensible and keep up by itself. Will R move forward into the future easier and faster than python seems to be doing. (I say no.) This is the answer that I would like to see from Leek and Peng.
My point (now) is that R alone doesn't allow the easier transition to the web that Python seems to have the advantage in. R does not interact with the web with flexibility and robustness in the same way that python has with flask and django. In my eye, Python can now be used more directly in a larger variety of situations.
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All good points.
The reason why JHU taught its older Data Science MOOCs in R is really only known to J. Leek and R. Peng. As far as I know this has not been discussed. The rest is speculation. Although, I think you are correct to speculate that it comes to personal preference & biases.
I have taken several of Leeks MOOCs and it's funny to note that he does not use ggplot2 (and the tidyverse, I believe) as much base R graphics. He says that base R is much simpler, easier and more productive. That is something I knew a long time ago. It may not be pretty but it damn well gets the job done.
Back to my point(s); For me the question (Now) becomes did they think R will progress and stay extensible and keep up by itself. Will R move forward into the future easier and faster than python seems to be doing. (I say no.) This is the answer that I would like to see from Leek and Peng.
My point (now) is that R alone doesn't allow the easier transition to the web that Python seems to have the advantage in. R does not interact with the web with flexibility and robustness in the same way that python has with flask and django. In my eye, Python can now be used more directly in a larger variety of situations.