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Ask HN Hackers: What's R's future?

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Re: Ask HN Hackers: What's R's future?

#21

Post by 8ren »

stcredzero wrote: post #18
8ren wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really true that business people use R directly? Being in Forbes is consistent with it... I recall that SQL was intended to be used by business people... and it probably has been, sometimes; but I don't think it happens much. The days of early adoption might have differed, through appealing to the more adventurous business people (as R might be now). One thing I know for a fact: business people use spreadsheets…

How about a spreadsheet that uses R as its scripting language? (There's one of these for Python.)

I don't know if business people do a lot of scripting (if any) in spreadsheets, because it side-steps the ease-of-use GUI of spreadsheet in favour of a programmer's UI...

Re: Ask HN Hackers: What's R's future?

#23

Post by ahi »

I predict a 10 year campaign of conquest followed by a 30 year death march. R is a complete mess that kicks ass in its niche. There are too many data types and the syntax seems kind of random, but two lines of R can get you publication quality graphics.

R is really becoming huge in academia. As far as I can tell, health sciences is the last SAS holdout. I expect it to take over business as well. Biz types will love it because it's so powerful as a scripting environment, but the programmers building and maintaining stuff with it will come to loathe it. R will become the PHP of analysis; ubiquitous but hated, and no one will have the chutzpah to fix it.

Random aside, anyone notice that the Kiwis are all over R? The original creators and the guy who wrote ggplot2 among many others.

Re: Ask HN Hackers: What's R's future?

#25

Post by mbreese »

eliben wrote: post #4

I wonder - could R in theory be rewritten as a Python library? If not, why not? Is there any special syntax of R that makes it more amenable to statistical analysis than Python? Performance concerns? It's just a shame to see a whole language popping out of something that could just be a library.

I've called out to R libraries before using rpy/rpy2. These have made it pretty easy. Then I can work with my data in Python, but when I need to use a stat function, I can just call out to R.

Re: Ask HN Hackers: What's R's future?

#26

Post by cschmidt »

R as a language could use some help. It is painfully slow, a big memory hog (since it copies large objects with abandon), and has lots of language "gotchas". We had a saying where I work: "R is really fast if you write it in C".

However, the libraries are great. Anything you'd want in statistics is already there. So I do use it all the time.

Just to say something nice, I do like data frames (a two dimensional matrix, where each column can have a different type).

Re: Ask HN Hackers: What's R's future?

#27

Post by something »

8ren wrote: post #21
stcredzero wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a spreadsheet that uses R as its scripting language? (There's one of these for Python.)

I don't know if business people do a lot of scripting (if any) in spreadsheets, because it side-steps the ease-of-use GUI of spreadsheet in favour of a programmer's UI...

look inside your average quantitative analysis or risk management group and you'll see that they definitely do.

Re: Ask HN Hackers: What's R's future?

#28

Post by follower »

ahi wrote: post #23

I predict a 10 year campaign of conquest followed by a 30 year death march. R is a complete mess that kicks ass in its niche. There are too many data types and the syntax seems kind of random, but two lines of R can get you publication quality graphics. R is really becoming huge in academia. As far as I can tell, health sciences is the last SAS holdout. I expect it to take over business as well. Biz types will love i…

Yeah, Ross Ihaka just received the "Lifetime Achievement in Open Source Award" at the New Zealand Open Source Awards the other day.

Re: Ask HN Hackers: What's R's future?

#30

Post by carbocation »

ahi wrote: post #23

I predict a 10 year campaign of conquest followed by a 30 year death march. R is a complete mess that kicks ass in its niche. There are too many data types and the syntax seems kind of random, but two lines of R can get you publication quality graphics. R is really becoming huge in academia. As far as I can tell, health sciences is the last SAS holdout. I expect it to take over business as well. Biz types will love i…

Not sure about the rest of the field of health sciences, but everything in genetics is written in C or in R (and usually as C libs for R). The generation above me used SAS, but they're no longer writing code.
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