Generalizing Support for Functional OOP in R
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Generalizing Support for Functional OOP in R
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Re: Generalizing Support for Functional OOP in R
#2To be honest, OOP never really seemed like a good fit for R. Functional programming is a much more natural fit, given that both it and R come from a mathematical point of view. R is a great language for the mathematical/statistical stuff it was invented to do, but I don't think it will ever be a general-purpose language, and it probably would become worse at its core purpose if it tried to.
More work on being easily used by/incorporated into applications written in other languages, would perhaps be a more impactful thing to work on.
Re: Generalizing Support for Functional OOP in R
#3To be honest, OOP never really seemed like a good fit for R. Functional programming is a much more natural fit, given that both it and R come from a mathematical point of view. R is a great language for the mathematical/statistical stuff it was invented to do, but I don't think it will ever be a general-purpose language, and it probably would become worse at its core purpose if it tried to. More work on being easily…
> More work on being easily used by/incorporated into applications written in other languages, would perhaps be a more impactful thing to work on.
That's basically a solved problem. For instance, RInside opens a C interface that can be called by any language that can call C functions, which is basically every language. It's efficient, too, because you're only passing pointers around. Here's an example in Ruby (disclaimer that I wrote it): https://github.com/eddelbuettel/rinside/blob/master/inst/exa...
Re: Generalizing Support for Functional OOP in R
#4To be honest, OOP never really seemed like a good fit for R. Functional programming is a much more natural fit, given that both it and R come from a mathematical point of view. R is a great language for the mathematical/statistical stuff it was invented to do, but I don't think it will ever be a general-purpose language, and it probably would become worse at its core purpose if it tried to. More work on being easily…
OOP has been a critical part of real-life R for a long time, especially in complex implementations of classes of kernels, algorithms, and so on with S4, and more general-purpose with R6. Without these frameworks it would be difficult to implement them.
Personally I find it more expressive for general-purpose computation than Python. The "fs" library is much better at working with files and paths than Python "os" and the multiple other modules that can be needed to work with with typical filesystem operations -/ especially if you are working with more than one file at a time.
I would even say that each of the R object systems is more expressive and more flexible than the Python one. I suspect lazy evaluation is a part of this.
Re: Generalizing Support for Functional OOP in R
#5To be honest, OOP never really seemed like a good fit for R. Functional programming is a much more natural fit, given that both it and R come from a mathematical point of view. R is a great language for the mathematical/statistical stuff it was invented to do, but I don't think it will ever be a general-purpose language, and it probably would become worse at its core purpose if it tried to. More work on being easily…
OOP has been a critical part of real-life R for a long time, especially in complex implementations of classes of kernels, algorithms, and so on with S4, and more general-purpose with R6. Without these frameworks it would be difficult to implement them. Personally I find it more expressive for general-purpose computation than Python. The "fs" library is much better at working with files and paths than Python "os" and…
I too much prefer R to Python (it’s far more expressive, for one) however it’s clear now that Python has “won” in this space and R is a tough sell to a wider team.
Re: Generalizing Support for Functional OOP in R
#6To be honest, OOP never really seemed like a good fit for R. Functional programming is a much more natural fit, given that both it and R come from a mathematical point of view. R is a great language for the mathematical/statistical stuff it was invented to do, but I don't think it will ever be a general-purpose language, and it probably would become worse at its core purpose if it tried to. More work on being easily…
OOP as used in R is very much a function of API design and not a function of routine R usage for data analysis. To many users of R they are not even aware that they are using OOP at all, especially for the S3 style of objects.
When you have an object, like `model summary()` ends up being very natural, and when you fit in the tidyverse operators many very complex workflows end up being very easy to digest.
But when you do pull back the kimono it gets ugly fast. The teams involved in this are the right people who have been working to make R an amazing language mostly through enhancements to libraries, and now they're trying to push some of that functionality back into core R, which I think is fantastic.
Re: Generalizing Support for Functional OOP in R
#7To be honest, OOP never really seemed like a good fit for R. Functional programming is a much more natural fit, given that both it and R come from a mathematical point of view. R is a great language for the mathematical/statistical stuff it was invented to do, but I don't think it will ever be a general-purpose language, and it probably would become worse at its core purpose if it tried to. More work on being easily…
OOP as used in R is very much a function of API design and not a function of routine R usage for data analysis. To many users of R they are not even aware that they are using OOP at all, especially for the S3 style of objects. When you have an object, like `model summary()` ends up being very natural, and when you fit in the tidyverse operators many very complex workflows end up being very easy to digest. But when yo…
Some detail about that phrase https://www.catalyst.org/2021/03/22/racism-misogyny-asian-am...
Re: Generalizing Support for Functional OOP in R
#8To be honest, OOP never really seemed like a good fit for R. Functional programming is a much more natural fit, given that both it and R come from a mathematical point of view. R is a great language for the mathematical/statistical stuff it was invented to do, but I don't think it will ever be a general-purpose language, and it probably would become worse at its core purpose if it tried to. More work on being easily…
OOP as used in R is very much a function of API design and not a function of routine R usage for data analysis. To many users of R they are not even aware that they are using OOP at all, especially for the S3 style of objects. When you have an object, like `model summary()` ends up being very natural, and when you fit in the tidyverse operators many very complex workflows end up being very easy to digest. But when yo…
In other words OOP can be great for tooling, but doesn't make much sense for what R is meant to be used for -interactive analysis- in every day work.
R's mess of OOP systems works great, S3 is "fine" for just dispatching 'methods' based on attributes, one doesn't even know it's happening in base R ALL the time.
R flexibility also makes it possible to build your own class system. i.e. modern ggplot2 has its own ggproto object system.
Re: Generalizing Support for Functional OOP in R
#9I trust the authors immensely but i don't see what yet another class system in R solves. That's on me, but I'd like to understand more of what motivates this effort.
Re: Generalizing Support for Functional OOP in R
#10This seems like a huge mess. Why is it so hard for R people to settle on a standard?