&quot;BUT to say I gave up on a language because it has so many options is strange to me.&quot;<p>This is a regular concern in designing a programming language. Give coders too much freedom and they invent 20 ways to do the same thing, none really clearly better than the other. Restrict the freedom and there&#x27;s more like 3-4 ways to do something, and usually one is better then the rest.<p>As a new user to R, I must say that the single hardest thing has been learning all the different ways to do something. Each blog&#x2F;stackoverflow&#x2F;etc... article I read seems to propose 5 different ways to do each thing. At the end of it, I&#x27;m left not really knowing how things work best.