Comment by coliveira
Everything you say explains why R is a great language in academia, and why people in research will stay away from "software engineering"-oriented languages like Java and JavaScript. Researchers already have too much to worry about.
I agree that researchers usually don’t need to worry about software engineering because their code is often simple, used only for one paper, and intended for personal use. But for large-scale research involving multiple researchers, users, and datasets, software engineering mindset can be beneficial in the long term.