One Year with R

#1

Post by _dain_ » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

Re: One Year with R

#2

Post by VariableStar » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:50 AM UTC

Excellent read. I agree with a lot (after only a cursory read). One thing the author seemingly forgives R by not mentioning is how harsh and discouraging of beginners the community was at some early stage. That was my experience around 2002-2006.

Re: One Year with R

#3

Post by kome » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:52 AM UTC

For my use case, R is absolutely terrible compared to some for profit statistical package / language. Using R feel like using an outdated, complicated and messy tool.

But guess what: it's free.

Re: One Year with R

#4

Post by evacchi » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 10:55 AM UTC

this comes immediately to mind http://arrgh.tim-smith.us/

Re: One Year with R

#5

Post by tweakimp » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 11:05 AM UTC

kome wrote: post #3

For my use case, R is absolutely terrible compared to some for profit statistical package / language. Using R feel like using an outdated, complicated and messy tool. But guess what: it's free.

Maybe you can switch to Python? Its also free and has a lot of statistical packages.

Re: One Year with R

#6

Post by uniqueuid » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 11:06 AM UTC

What always surprises me is how many people make beautiful, lovingly-crafted band-aids to the language's warts and problems. Not just code + packages but social band-aids too.

In a way, you could argue that the entire tidyverse is a huge effort of a band-aid.

So for all the irritating design choices and idiosyncracies, R is still a network of islands that work incredibly well for people, as long as they don't ever go to sea.

Re: One Year with R

#7

Post by jboynyc » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 11:07 AM UTC

VariableStar wrote: post #2

Excellent read. I agree with a lot (after only a cursory read). One thing the author seemingly forgives R by not mentioning is how harsh and discouraging of beginners the community was at some early stage. That was my experience around 2002-2006.

I'm not sure that's true anymore. The one thing that I find interesting about the R community (being at home in Pythonland myself) is the availability of great teaching and learning resources. At least that's the case in the social sciences, where R has pretty strong adoption.

Re: One Year with R

#8

Post by zhdc1 » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 11:09 AM UTC

kome wrote: post #3

For my use case, R is absolutely terrible compared to some for profit statistical package / language. Using R feel like using an outdated, complicated and messy tool. But guess what: it's free.

> For my use case, R is absolutely terrible compared to some for profit statistical package / language.

Which one? I've switched most of my work over to Julia, but I'd much rather use R or Python than Stata or SPSS.

Re: One Year with R

#9

Post by tgvaughan » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 11:15 AM UTC

evacchi wrote: post #4

this comes immediately to mind http://arrgh.tim-smith.us/

As somebody who also used to enjoy bashing R for similar reasons, I think the new preamble to that document is an important and nice addition. (Wasn't there last time I read it.)

Re: One Year with R

#10

Post by musingsole » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 11:18 AM UTC

zhdc1 wrote: post #8

kome wrote: post #3

For my use case, R is absolutely terrible compared to some for profit statistical package / language. Using R feel like using an outdated, complicated and messy tool. But guess what: it's free.

> For my use case, R is absolutely terrible compared to some for profit statistical package / language. Which one? I've switched most of my work over to Julia, but I'd much rather use R or Python than Stata or SPSS.

I don't understand the use case for SPSS. My local university is training their neuroscience researchers on it, which seems so odd in 2022 with Julia or python sitting right there.