I had a similar story. I used R for statistics at college, but only base R, and it is verbose even for basic data manipulation. The scripts I made for my older data blog posts are effectively incomprehensible to me now.
I ended up learning how to use Python/pandas/IPython because I had had enough and wanted a second option on how to do data analysis.
Then the R package dplyr was released in 2013, alleviating most annoyances I had with R. dplyr/ggplot2 alone are strong reasons to stick with the R ecosystem. (not that Python is bad/worse; as I mention at the post, both ecosystems are worth knowing)
I ended up learning how to use Python/pandas/IPython because I had had enough and wanted a second option on how to do data analysis.
Then the R package dplyr was released in 2013, alleviating most annoyances I had with R. dplyr/ggplot2 alone are strong reasons to stick with the R ecosystem. (not that Python is bad/worse; as I mention at the post, both ecosystems are worth knowing)