&gt;&gt;but if I were to recommend one or the other to people at work with no programming skills, I would have to choose R for the breadth of existing packages.<p>My 2 cents: If someone has no programming background, then building a foundation from python will allow them to do much much more than building a foundation on R--unless of course they only care about statistical analysis and have no inclination to code more generally. I learned both at the same time even though I had no use for Python at the time (was and still am a professor) but I use it almost everyday now and very much enjoy it!