[R] F# vs. R

[Sharpie]

Sergey Goriatchev wrote:
> 
> Hello, Marc
> 
> No, I do not want to validate Cox PH. :-)
> I do use R daily, though right now I do not use the statistical part that
> much.
> 
> I just generally wonder if any R-user tried F# and his/her opinions.
> 
> Regards,
> Sergey
> 

In my work as a programmer- this line of thinking usually leads to one set
of questions:

  What problem am I really trying to solve?  Am a using the right tools to
attack that problem?

Mulling over the above questions usually presents a choice:

  1.  Learn and deploy a new tool that is better suited at attacking the
problem than the tools I am currently comfortable with.

  2.  Stick with one of my better-known tools because it is stronger across
a wider class of problems due to factors such as language flexibility,
available libraries, widespread adoption, etc.

So, if you feel in your gut that F# is better suited to your current or
future programming problems than R, it may be worthwhile to invest some time
learning the language.  If you have the time, it can also be extremely
valuable to learn a different language just to try a different approach to
solving problems.

Personally, I have done very little programming in functional languages- a
little bit of Erlang and the tiniest amount of Haskell.  But the week or two
I have spend on those languages profoundly changed the way I program in R. 
I discovered a whole bunch of functional programming constructs in R that I
feel have made my code smaller and cleaner.

In the end I stick with R due to the wealth of libraries available on CRAN,
the ease at which the language can be extended via packaging, and the fact
that it allows for a variety of approaches to problems.

However, it never hurts to have more tools in the toolbox.


-Charlie

-----
Charlie Sharpsteen
Undergraduate-- Environmental Resources Engineering
Humboldt State University
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