Andy Kirk shares the results of a rather informal Twitter poll:
Yesterday I ran a simple Twitter poll about the relative ease of learning R vs. Python. Although a correct answer to this query will ALWAYS have to be based on nuances like pre-existing skills and the scope of need, this originates from people telling me they encounter job or career profiles that list a need for R and/or Python. If they don’t have either, if they prioritised the pursuit of just one, which would be possible to develop a degree of competency more easily, more quickly and more efficiently?
Andy has also created a Twitter moment from the responses.
My thought, based only on the question itself, is that R would be better than Python because the hypothetical person has no additional programming skills. For someone with additional programming skills, the breakdown for me starts with, if your background is statistics, database development, or functional programming, you probably want R; if your background is object-oriented development or imperative programming, you probably want Python. And then it gets nuanced.