So why didn't/don't they use Java, R & Perl more often?

Because with Java you have to write inflated Fugu, R is too specific and it lacks the vast ecosystem of Python, and Perl causes eye cancer.

> R is too specific and it lacks the vast ecosystem of Python

That's the first time I've ever heard this criticism of R: most staunch R critics will acknowledge R's vast breadth and depth of statistical libraries outclasses Python. Python has far more general use programming libraries (so deploying models is easier) and used to have a slight advantage in ML specific libraries, but there aren't major differences nowadays between the two ecosystems.

Searching for 'R' in CRAN returns around 24000 R packages, pypistats.org tells about 437000 Python packages. This is not a major difference to you?

I admit, that R has an advantage in bleeding edge statistics, e.g. from papers. But that is nothing >99% of statistics users need.

> Because with Java you have to write inflated Fugu, R is too specific and it lacks the vast ecosystem of Python, and Perl causes eye cancer.

Tell me you know nothing about academia without telling me you know nothing about academia.

R is a staple of anything statistics, Java is immensely used, and Perl is the backbone of half of bioinformatics.

And how does just one of your statements contradict my post??