Why are some themes made in blogdown and what are the advantages of so?

Hello, I am a newcomer to Hugo

I am using this Hugo Apero theme for a club portfolio.

The set-up for this theme was completely different as I had to install blogdown, RStdio and R. Till yet, I have only create basic vanilla sites by placing themes in \themes.

I do not understand the need for RMarkdown and R in creating such themes and is there a way to continue with Apero without having to install blogdown/R?

That’s a question for the theme author.