R doesn't seem to get much frontpage love on HN, or even if it does and I haven't seen, what would people suggest is the technology for statistics going forward? I really hoped it would be around Clojure (e.g. Incanter[1]) and not Python, for entirely selfish reasons.
The old joke is that the reason why R is awesome is that it was created by statisticians, and the reason why R sucks is that it was created by statisticians. As an every-day user of R, I can't help but think that description is perfect.
It also means that R isn't going away. It is getting more popular, and there is a ton of work on improving the runtime, which will only mitigate people's itches to move away from it. But most importantly, it has the network effects to its advantage.
Even as a Clojure lover, I can't see R ever being substituted. I see more hope for the Renjin project than I see for alternatives like Pandas/SciPi/NumPy, Julia, or Incanter.
And that $300 price tag goes up to $1000 if you want a license that lets you use Mathematica in any sort of commercial or professional context (it only goes up to $500 if you only want to use it an academic setting).
[1]: http://incanter.org/