That is a major difference between these two languages.<p>Python: There should be one, and only one, preferable way to do things. Though this may not be obvious at first.<p>R: Every author has a different style of doing things, reflecting in the code.<p>As for the comparison in general: You can call R from within Python. So Python is at least as powerful as R. The rest (BeautifulSoup, Compression, Game development etc.) is icing on the cake.