I understand where you&#x27;re coming from, but these two lines are exactly &#x27;taking a list of libraries for import&#x27;.<p>packages is a character vector of package names, lapply is by definition &#x27;list apply&#x27;. We&#x27;re taking a list of packages and applying the library function on them.<p>This seems complicated if you&#x27;re not used to it but <i>R is a functional language</i>. Approaching R from this perspective makes it a powerful, flexible.