R:

– Focuses on better, user friendly data analysis, statistics and graphical models
– The closer you are to statistics, data science and research, the more you might prefer R
– Statistical models can be written with only a few lines in R
– The same piece of functionality can be written in several ways in R
– Mainly used for standalone computing or analysis on individual servers
– Large number of packages, for anything!

Python
– Used by programmers that want to delve into data science
– The closer you are working in an engineering environment, the more you might prefer Python
– Coding and debugging is easier mainly because of the nice syntax
– Any piece of functionality is always written the same way in Python
– When data analysis needs to be implemented with web apps
– Good tool to implement algorithms for production use
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