johannes rara<johannesr...@gmail.com> wrote:
My intention is to give a presentation about R programming language
for software developers. I would like to ask, what are the things that
make R different from other programming languages? What are the
specific cases where Java/C#/Python developer might say "Wow, that was
neat!"? What are the things that are easy in R, but very difficult in
other programming languages (like Java)?
Hi johannes,
Think of it as a classic work of cinematic art.
The Good
It's familiar. If you've programmed in C (or FORTRAN, APL,...) the
syntax will be sufficiently familiar that the noob can begin doing
useful things right away. Building functions is a natural step from
using the numerous built in functions. It's easy to get started with the
bits that are cool and fun, like graphics. I recall programming a
psychological test in Tcl-Tk (which I like a great deal) and finding
that even simple graphics were a lot more difficult than they are in R.
The Bad
It's not always what you expect. It is so easy to get started that most
people will get tripped up by some neat feature of the underlying object
oriented programming model. For a while, the more you learn, the more
you have to learn.
The Ugly
You are almost encouraged to write sloppy spaghetti code, as most common
problems will yield to monkey-search programming in R. Just stick things
together until the answer comes out. That's the price you pay for The Good.
Jim
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