A lot of virtual ink has been spilled on whether R or Python is better suited to the needs of "data scientists".
Numerous people (no, evangelicals) have weighed in with their polemics (summarized, briefly as "R is not really a language!", "Python is displacing R!", and "Will Python kill R?").
So, it's confusing (i.e., if you happen to care at all, though you don't have to; this is the internet, where the less people know or care about something, the stronger their opinions on it), but luckily someone did come up with a data-driven approach to solving this problem. Check it out:
Now you can make up your own damn mind.