[R] [FORGED] Newbie Question on R versus Matlab/Octave versus C

[Gabor Grothendieck]

This would be a suitable application for NetLogo.  The R package
RNetLogo provides an interface.  In a few lines of code you get a
simulation with graphics.

On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 7:00 PM Alan Feuerbacher <alanf00 using comcast.net> wrote:
>
> On 1/28/2019 4:20 PM, Rolf Turner wrote:
> >
> > On 1/29/19 10:05 AM, Alan Feuerbacher wrote:
> >
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I recently learned of the existence of R through a physicist friend
> >> who uses it in his research. I've used Octave for a decade, and C for
> >> 35 years, but would like to learn R. These all have advantages and
> >> disadvantages for certain tasks, but as I'm new to R I hardly know how
> >> to evaluate them. Any suggestions?
> >
> > * C is fast, but with a syntax that is (to my mind) virtually
> >    incomprehensible.  (You probably think differently about this.)
>
> I've been doing it long enough that I have little problem with it,
> except for pointers. :-)
>
> > * In C, you essentially have to roll your own for all tasks; in R,
> >    practically anything (well ...) that you want to do has already
> >    been programmed up.  CRAN is a wonderful resource, and there's more
> >    on github.
>  >
> > * The syntax of R meshes beautifully with *my* thought patterns; YMMV.
> >
> > * Why not just bog in and try R out?  It's free, it's readily available,
> >    and there are a number of good online tutorials.
>
> I just installed R on my Linux Fedora system, so I'll do that.
>
> I wonder if you'd care to comment on my little project that prompted
> this? As part of another project, I wanted to model population growth
> starting from a handful of starting individuals. This is exponential in
> the long run, of course, but I wanted to see how a few basic parameters
> affected the outcome. Using Octave, I modeled a single person as a
> "cell", which in Octave has a good deal of overhead. The program
> basically looped over the entire population, and updated each person
> according to the parameters, which included random statistical
> variations. So when the total population reached, say 10,000, and an
> update time of 1 day, the program had to execute 10,000 x 365 update
> operations for each year of growth. For large populations, say 100,000,
> the program did not return even after 24 hours of run time.
>
> So I switched to C, and used its "struct" declaration and an array of
> structs to model the population. This allowed the program to complete in
> under a minute as opposed to 24 hours+. So in line with your comments, C
> is far more efficient than Octave.
>
> How do you think R would fare in this simulation?
>
> Alan
>
>
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