@Pat

R the programming language :P

@peterdrake

@freemo @Pat @peterdrake the sequel to S

@icedquinn @freemo @peterdrake

>"the sequel to S"

Only for dyslexics (like me).

R is just S in disguise (GNU S to be accurate)

@freemo @peterdrake

R you sure?

Science
Biology and medicine
Arginine, an amino acid
ATC code R Respiratory system, a section of the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System
Coefficient of relationship (r), in biology
Effective reproduction number (R), the number of cases generated by one case in the current state of a population in epidemiology
Basic reproduction number (R0), the expected number of cases directly generated by one case
Haplogroup R (mtDNA), a human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup
Haplogroup R (Y-DNA), a Y-chromosomal DNA (Y-DNA) haplogroup
Net reproduction rate (R0), the average number of offspring that would be born to a female given conforming conditions
r, the population growth rate in the r/K selection theory of ecology
Astronomy
Spectral resolution ({\displaystyle \mathbb {R} }\mathbb {R} ), in astronomy
Orangish or K carbon stars (stellar classification: R)
Physics
R (cross section ratio), the ratio of hadronic to muonic cross sections
Electrical resistance (R)
Roentgen (unit) (R), a unit of measurement for ionizing radiation such as X-ray and gamma rays
Rydberg constant (R∞, RH), a physical constant relating to energy levels of electrons within atoms
Rydberg unit of energy (Ry), the energy of the photon whose wavenumber is the Rydberg constant
Temperature scales
Rankine scale (°R, °Ra)
Réaumur scale (°Ré, °Re, °r)
Rømer scale (°R, °Rø)
Chemistry
Gas constant (R), in chemistry
R, one of two chiral center configurations in the R/S system
Side chain (an unspecified group of atoms), in a chemical or structural formula
Mathematics
r is the symbol for the radius of a circle
{\displaystyle \mathbb {R} }\mathbb {R} or R, the set of all real numbers
Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r), in statistics
Ricci curvature
Technology and engineering
R-value (insulation), a non-SI measure of thermal resistance used in housing insulation
R-value (soils), property of soils used in pavement design
Resistor, an electronic component
R-, a refrigerant numbering system
R, the ratio between the minimum and maximum stresses in fracture mechanics
R- or recall-button, now mostly used to switch between two calls
Computing
R (programming language), an environment for statistical computing and graphics
R (complexity), the set of all recursive languages
IBM System R, an IBM database system
RequestBot, a service in QuakeNet's IRC services
Arts and entertainment
Music
Ritardando, a term for slowing the tempo down gradually
R. (R. Kelly album), a 1998 album by R. Kelly
R° (Ruratia album), a 2002 album by Rurutia
R (single album), a 2021 single album by Rosé
Rated R (Queens of the Stone Age album), 2000 album also called R
R (jp), 2005 J-Pop album by Ryoko Shiraishi
Film
R (film), a 2010 film by Danish screenwriter and film director Tobias Lindholm
R, a character played by John Cleese in The World Is Not Enough
R, the protagonist of Warm Bodies, based on the book of the same name
R, a film rating in the Motion Picture Association of America film rating system and in the Canadian Home Video Rating System
Television
Rajawali Televisi (RTV), television in Indonesia
R, the production code for the 1965 Doctor Who serial The Chase
Video games
R·Type, an arcade video game
R: Rock'n Riders, in the list of PlayStation games (M–Z)
Organisations
The Crown, Rex (King) or Regina (Queen) in Commonwealth nations
Ryder (NYSE ticker symbol)
R (cable operator), a telecommunications company
R, denoting a member of the US Republican Party
Transportation
Nissan Skyline GT-R, commonly referred to as the R in Japan
R (New York City Subway service)
Reconnaissance aircraft (military designation: R)
Restricted airspace
Volkswagen R, the performance division of Volkswagen
Other uses
Registered trademark symbol (®)
South African rand (R), a currency
Right (direction)
Rolled R (IPA: r), the alveolar trill of Spanish, Italian, & Arabic languages
UTC−05:00 (military time zone code: Romeo)
Я, a Cyrillic letter similar to R

(source: wikipedia)

@freemo My sense is that people who come to data science from stats like R, but the ones who come from computer science like Python.

@peterdrake I would say thats sort of true. But replace "like" with "taught first"/ No one in their right mind would build a product with R, but its often all statisticians know since they arent taught to build products.

This is all very relative to what im doing now as I am in charge of a team that includes a software division of statisticians who started out knowing just R and I have literally needed to teach them to code in python from scratch. .While they know R better even they would admit its a horrible language to build concrete apps out of.

@freemo @peterdrake though it is a nice challenge like writing apps in #haskell

I have the fun this semester to learn machine learning in R.

@freemo @peterdrake Unsolicited opinion time! 😂

I've used R for 6-7 years; in short, it's *not bad*. It has a lot of nice things: first class functions and lambdas, automatic vectorized syntax, DECADES worth of really good packages, excellent publishing software with LaTeX integration, etc. but in my opinion falls flat in a number of key areas:

1. Very slow in most cases. Can't be compiled and doesn't package easily, which makes transporting code to different people cumbersome.

2. Syntax is frustrating at times to deal with: there are different conventions across the myriad of opinionated packages, and none of them play nicely. Tidyverse is great, but dealing with dataframes, tibbles, matrices, tables, etc. are all really annoying. They're all basically tables, but you never really know what some function will return (unless you check), and they all look the same in the View/print output. Also the typeof() and class() functions return different values on the same input, so you often have to run both to diagnose the issue.

3. Sometimes it "tries to help" a little too much in terms of assuming how certain code you write should be interpreted. Certain code works on vectors works on matrices and lists of lists, but other functions will fail spectacularly. These failures often don't error out and break the program; thus begins the bug hunt.

4. Error messages suck. A lot. No line numbers, nothing, just some arbitrary message, sometimes that has no discernible meaning. RStudio tries to help here, but it just provides an okay-ish debugger.

5. IMO it's barely usable without a repl until you have a year or two under your belt, hence you're basically locked in to RStudio or a Jupyter Notebook. The former has autocomplete and a better help system, so I would start there.

6. No pipes by default, no map/reduce/repeat/etc. by default either. Look into the purrr package for these features though!

7. While technically multiparadigm, I personally don't think they did a good job integrating them all to work cohesively. Julia does this much better.

I think that covers my take. While R certainly isn't as terrible as @freemo is making it out to be (sorry not sorry 😉), my current favorite is Julia by far. If you have the option to use is instead of or to interop it with R, I really suggest it.

Either way, I hope you have fun with it! I'm interested to see what you think after you give it a shot, assuming you're willing to do a review, lol.

@johnabs @freemo Oh, I'm sure I'll have a lot of comments along the way.

For background, I use Python in my AI & Machine Learning class and in my version of our quantitative first-year seminar. In the fall I'll be teaching that seminar as well as Intro to Data Science. The latter is sometimes taught by a political economist, who chose R. I'm going to follow her lead, because (a) there's some value in students in different semesters getting a consistent experience, and (b) since I'll probably be directing our data science program in a few years, I should be conversant in both Python and R.

@peterdrake

Knowing both Python and R is a good place to be if you want to deal with the scientific community for sure.

@johnabs