Ben Bolker wrote:
I can see that fortune("S4") is going to produce more than one possible
response
soon ... (is Achim Zeleis listening?)
Ben
In all fairness, it should probably be noted that quite a few people swear BY S4 in addition to those who swear AT it.
-p
Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:spencerg wrote:Hi, Terry:Thanks for the comments. I too vastly prefer S3 to S4. YourMe too. My summary is this: If you love computer science more than you value your own time, use S4. Frank Harrellcomparison is based on much greater experience than mine. Could you please check the link you sent? I couldn't get it to work. Thanks again. Spencer Terry Therneau wrote:For 90 percent of what I do I strongly prefer the loose (S3) rather than the rigid (S4) classes. So I'm closer to Rolf. My summary of S4 vs S3 A large increment in 1. nuisance to write2. difficulty to debug 3. ability to write very obscure code 4. design Gain 5. ability to direct automatic conversions 6. validate the contents of a class objectFor simple objects 5 and 6 can be critical. Consider a date for instance, which will often be turned into a character, added or subtracted as a numeric, plotted, etc. Conversely, aspects of 1-4 are less worrisome for a simple object, particularly #4: I have a reasonable chance of "getting it right" the first time. For a complex object such as the result of a coxph fit fit <- coxph(Surv(time, status) ~ age + sex + treatment)#5 makes no sense at all: as.numeric(fit)??? Number 4 and 6 are really hard; after 15+ years of tuning I am still modifying the list of components in a coxph object. I know more about the computational aspects of Cox models than almost anyone and still it's not enough. Changes are harder with rigid classes.With reference to #3 above, for your amusement, look at www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/98/May/straustrup.htmlthe key line (to me) being "..every C++ programmer feels bound by some mystic promise to use every damm element of the languange on every project..."Terry T. ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-helpPLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.htmland provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.-- Frank E Harrell Jr Professor and Chair School of Medicine Department of Biostatistics Vanderbilt University ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
-- O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Øster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - ([email protected]) FAX: (+45) 35327907 ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
