Hi Arin,
Others have commented wisely an your first issue.  As for your 2nd issue, I
had my own concerns about using R in undergraduate teaching because I had
always used a point-and-click program for that level.  I should not have
worried.  The current generation has been typing on their keyboards and
their phones for a long time; they are very skilled.  They LIKE a
command-line interface, so long as someone gives them an initial cheat sheet
to get them going.  They like the price, they like having it on their own
computers, and they like that they can use it other courses.  Some students
are sometimes upset that no one has ever told them about R before.  Two
hours after the first lab in which I had students download R to their
laptops, I received an email from a student telling me about how she had
used R to do her physics homework.  I like the (almost)
platform-independence of R.  I've resisted using Rcmdr and JGR because I
want students to be able to use base R well.  If they want to customize
later, then fine.  But what I teach them will apply wherever they next
encounter R, whereas if were to use a lot of packages--especially one I
would be tempted to create to match my teaching more closely--then they
wouldn't be sure what to expect later.

gary mcclelland
Colorado

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