There are a few things the author did not mention, such as RStudio Server, Shiny. If you get to know them, you will find they do certain tasks extremely well, and there is simply no equivalent of these in other data programing ecosystems.
Comparing R with others as merely a language is close to meaningless. You have to take the whole ecosystems into account.
There's no greater joy than whipping up a POC in a few hours using R Shiny and showing it to senior leaders when they were told that it will take months to get a POC ready.
Comparing R with others as merely a language is close to meaningless. You have to take the whole ecosystems into account.