[R] R as a programming language

[Simon Blomberg]

Although Crawley is an ecologist, not a programmer or statistician. But
he is an FRS. Maybe that counts for something. ;-)

Simon.

On Thu, 2007-11-08 at 01:56 +0300, Alexy Khrabrov wrote:
> With all due respect to the great book -- of which I own 2 copies I  
> bought new -- it's not an "O'Reilly Programming in <X>" book.  The  
> idea of a programming book like that is to thoroughly treat the  
> language from a programmer's standpoint, in a fairly standard way,  
> such as Ruby or Python.
> 
> As I'm learning more of statistics with R, I prefer to do it with the  
> book by Crawley.  Looks like most of R books are written by  
> statisticians who became programmers, not the other way.  Through all  
> those years I periodically follow R, I forget its programming spirit  
> in between, and there's no "Programming ..." book to help.   
> Statistics is hard to forget once you master it; syntax sugar melts  
> away...
> 
> "Programming with Data" is the closest to an O'Reilly, but more  
> advanced and esoteric than that.
> 
> Since R became a bona fide Open Source language with CRAN and all, an  
> O'Reilly book by a [Python and Ruby] programmer-turn-statistician is  
> long overdue!  If it systematically compares R with Ruby and Python,  
> its closest Open Source cousins, it would help even more.  RPy and  
> RRb are there to help, too.  Just my $0.01...
> 
> Cheers,
> Alexy
> 
> On Nov 7, 2007, at 7:46 PM, Bert Gunter wrote:
> 
> >>> (Will someone here please write an O'Reilly's "Programming in  
> >>> R"?  :)
> >
> > Someone already has ... see Venable and Ripley's S PROGRAMMING.
> >
> > **However** R is more than a general purpose programming language:  
> > it is a
> > programming language specifically designed for data analysis --  
> > including
> > statistical graphics -- and statistics. So, IMHO anyway, it's really
> > impossible to discuss it without reference to the data structures and
> > procedures underlying such tasks. Because it is targeted to do  
> > those sorts
> > of things well, it may handle poorly some things that general purpose
> > languages do well (minimizing storage with the use of references, for
> > example).
> >
> > My own experience is that one appreciates the power and beauty of the
> > language and the wisdom of the designers the more one uses it in real
> > applications. But I am not a computer scientist and have only a  
> > limited
> > exposure to standard CS concepts and algorithms, to say nothing of  
> > "real"
> > programming experience. So just my $.02.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Bert Gunter
> > Genentech Nonclinical Statistics
> >
> 
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-- 
Simon Blomberg, BSc (Hons), PhD, MAppStat. 
Lecturer and Consultant Statistician 
Faculty of Biological and Chemical Sciences 
The University of Queensland 
St. Lucia Queensland 4072 
Australia
Room 320 Goddard Building (8)
T: +61 7 3365 2506 
email: S.Blomberg1_at_uq.edu.au

Policies:
1.  I will NOT analyse your data for you.
2.  Your deadline is your problem.

The combination of some data and an aching desire for 
an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can 
be extracted from a given body of data. - John Tukey.