R: Why it's the next programming language you should

learn
For those who aren't yet familiar with R, let's begin with a quick overview. To
start, R is a fascinating programming language, one that has recently become
an appealing skill to add to your resume. That's partly because the language
has grown significantly in popularity; it's now used in a range of professions
including software development, business analysis, statistical reporting and
scientific research. Its more likely than ever that youll encounter R in your
organization -- and youll probably even find reasons to use it yourself.
If you need proof, look no further than Rs growth, which is reflected in a
number of independent lists; it has bounced around in the top 20. In
2015, IEEE listed R at 6 in the top 10 languages of 2015. Additionally, as the
amount of data-intensive work increases, the demand for tools like R for
processing, data-mining and visualization will also increase.
R is used in various business situations which can be listed as follows:

R in business
R originated as an open-source version of the S programming language in the 90s.
Since then, it has gained the support of a number of companies, most
notably RStudio and Revolution Analytics which created tools, packages, and services
related to the language. But it isn't limited to these more specialized companies; R also
has support from large companies that power some of the largest relational databases
in the world. Oracle, for one, has incorporated R into its offerings . Earlier this
year Microsoft acquired Revolution Analytics and is including the language in
SQLServer 2016. SQLServer administrators and .NET developers now have R at their
fingertips, installed with their standard platform tools.

R in higher education
Heres a fun fact: R originated in academia. Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the
University of Auckland in New Zealand created it, and its been widely adopted in
graduate programs that include intensive statistical study. R has also been used in
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) such as the Coursera Data Science Program and
in courses here at Pluralsight (including my own on R and RStudio ). Folks taking
graduate studies that involve crunching data are bound to encounter R, and like many
other technologies, its introduction in schools leads naturally to its wider adoption in

industry. Rs presence in higher education is confirmation of the demand for these skills
in business settings.

R is used by big corporates

Many big companies like Facebook, Google, Bank of America, Ford etc used R as a
preferred language for their data analytics purpose. As per Mathew Jones, R is
expected to see a growth of 23.7% CAGR in the year 2015-2020.
Many companies are in process of adopting R language into their operations.

R is profitable
Technology is fun, sure, but most of us who enjoy it also do it for a living. Fortunately, R
is not only a pleasure to use, but its demand in business often equates to higher
salaries for its practitioners. The Dice Technology Salary Survey conducted last year
ranked R as a highest-paying skill. The most recent OReilly Data Science Salary
Survey also includes R among the skills used by the highest paid data scientists.

R has a diverse community

The R community is diverse, with many individuals coming from unique professional
backgrounds. This list includes academics, scientists, statisticians, business analysts
and professional programmers, among others. CRAN , the comprehensive R Archive
Network, maintains packages created by community members that reflect this colorful
background. Packages exist to perform stock market analysis, create maps, engage in
high-throughput genomic analysis and do natural language processing. This is only the
tip of the iceberg; over 7000 packages are available on CRAN as of this writing.
Additionally, R-Bloggers is a blog-aggregation site that serves as a hub for news related
to the R community.

R is fun
And, of course, R is FUN! Initially, I was drawn to R for its ability to generate charts and
plots in very few lines of code.; tasks that would require several hundred lines of code
in another language could be accomplished in only a few lines. While its considered
quirky when you compare it with many popular languages, it includes powerful features
specifically geared toward data analysis. For example, if you run the following snippet
at the R prompt: