[R] open source and R

[Roger Bivand]

On Sun, 13 Nov 2005, Robert wrote:

> If I do not know C or FORTRAN, how can I fully understand the package or
> possibly improve it?

By learning enough to see whether that makes a difference for your 
purposes. Life is hard, but that's what makes life interesting ...

> Robert.
> 
> Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand at nhh.no> wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Nov 2005, Robert wrote:
> 
> > Roger Bivand wrote: 
> > On Sun, 13 Nov 2005, Robert wrote:
> > 
> > > It uses FORTRAN code and not in pure R.
> > 
> > The same applies to deldir - it also includes Fortran. So the answer seems 
> > to be no, there is no voronoi function only written in R.
> > 
> 
> Robert wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I am curious about one thing: since the reason for using r is r is a
> > easy-to-learn language and it is good for getting more people involved.
> > Why most of the packages written in r use other languages such as
> > FORTRAN's code? I understand some functions have already been written in
> > other language or it is faster to be implemented in other language. But
> > my understanding is if the user does not know that language (for
> > example, FORTRAN), the package is still a black box to him because he
> > can not improve the package and can not be involved in the development. 
> > When I searched the packages of R, I saw many packages with duplicated
> > or similar functions. the main difference among them are the different
> > functions implemented using other languages, which are always a black
> > box to the users. So it is very hard for users to believe the package
> > will run something they need, let alone getting involved in the
> > development. My comments are not to disregard these efforts. But it is
> > good to see the packages written in pure R.
> > 
> 
> Please indent your replies, they are very difficult to read sensibly.
> 
> Although surprisingly much of R is written in R, quite a lot is written in
> Fortran and C. One very good reason, apart from efficiency, is code re-use
> - BLAS and LAPACK among many others are excellent implementations of what
> we need for numerical linear algebra. R is very typical of good scientific
> software, it tries to avoid re-implementing functions that are used by the
> community, are well-supported by the community, and work. Packages by and
> large do the same - if existing software does the required job, package
> authors attempt to port that software to R, providing interfaces to
> underlying C or Fortran libraries. 
> 
> It's about standing on the shoulders of giants.
> 
> 

-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no