R was heavily inspired by scheme, and I think that's a big part of why it's so popular in the scientific community (it's a great language for authoring DSLs). In fact, DSLs are so good in R that lots of midwit CS bros love to dunk on R the language, not realizing that what they're complaining about is in fact some library function. I like to tell people that R is "scheme on the streets, FORTRAN in the sheets". Just like Clojure deviated from I think R was very much developed as a Lisp designed to facilitate complex and flexible scientific applications (with an emphasis on statistical computing). I think you could develop a compelling analogy that Clojure:JVM::R:Numerics-oriented C/FORTRAN
From TFA, ...the creator of the R programming language, Ross Ihaka, who provided benchmarks demonstrating that Lisp’s optional type declaration and machine-code compiler allow for code that is 380 times faster than R and 150 times faster than Python
If we are living in a simulation, you can be sure it is programmed in Lisp - that's why using it feels so magical, it's a glimpse behind the veil.
https://xkcd.com/224/
Nice high level overview wuth some case studies briefly described.
*with, typo.
R was heavily inspired by scheme, and I think that's a big part of why it's so popular in the scientific community (it's a great language for authoring DSLs). In fact, DSLs are so good in R that lots of midwit CS bros love to dunk on R the language, not realizing that what they're complaining about is in fact some library function. I like to tell people that R is "scheme on the streets, FORTRAN in the sheets". Just like Clojure deviated from I think R was very much developed as a Lisp designed to facilitate complex and flexible scientific applications (with an emphasis on statistical computing). I think you could develop a compelling analogy that Clojure:JVM::R:Numerics-oriented C/FORTRAN
From TFA, ...the creator of the R programming language, Ross Ihaka, who provided benchmarks demonstrating that Lisp’s optional type declaration and machine-code compiler allow for code that is 380 times faster than R and 150 times faster than Python
R is built on a Lisp-like run-time core, complete with symbols, and linked lists made of cons cells, etc.