5 ms·

Christ almighty, why not just use SAS at that point. Ross Ihaka was so disappointed by Revolution's value-subtracted offerings that he disowned the entire R pro

by apathy 10y ago

Christ almighty, why not just use SAS at that point. Ross Ihaka was so disappointed by Revolution's value-subtracted offerings that he disowned the entire R project.

worik 10y ago
Have you a reference for that?
- fnord123 10y ago
  I'm not sure what GP means by Ross "disowning the entire R project". Maybe it's a brain fart. But Ross does (if this is indeed him commenting on dbms2.com) want people to not use Revolution Analytics fork: http://www.dbms2.com/2010/05/04/revolution-analytics-confused/ http://www.dbms2.com/2010/05/04/revolution-analytics-confuse...
- _Wintermute 10y ago
  Probably referring to this: https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-and-build-something-better/ https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-...
  - apathy 10y ago
    Bingo. I exaggerated... Very slightly. Thanks for digging that link up.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
      Six years is a long time in software.
curiousgal 10y ago
Isn't SAS better than R?
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Depends how much money you have
- SmellTheGlove 10y ago
  I think so, at least for my use, but I'm at a large company and I don't see the licensing costs (nor do they directly come out of my budget). It's not to say R is bad, it just takes (me) longer to do similar work. Of course, we're also a Teradata shop and being able to run R in-database is awfully tempting - but I doubt we'd save any money at that point (even if its not my budget, still have to justify it), and we'd have a ton of stuff to migrate. And we're not really performance bottlenecked right now. There's a cost tradeoff there, but R has really been awesome in getting really solid statistical and data manipulation software in the hands of individuals and small businesses for free. For instance, I don't have SAS at home - my basement hacking uses R.
  - JohnDoe365 10y ago
    What I can say is that SAS allows you to get quicker at visualisations and analysis without actually knowing what you are doing. R requires you to think before and ask the questions you would like to get from the data.
    - apathy 10y ago
      Another excellent point. R, like UNIX, is user friendly. It's just very demanding towards its friends.
- nol13 10y ago
  Kind of, in the same way that waterboarding is better than good cop bad cop.
- apathy 10y ago
  If you like writing COBOL, sure. Naturally, for anything interesting (eg fitting a lasso penalized GLM) SAS (and others) encourage you to simply call out to R. (I will now wait for someone to amuse me by bringing up the misleadingly named PROC in SAS that does L1 regularization... to linear models.) I can use either, personally I prefer R. Or Python. Or scala. Or really anything that isn't SAS. I feel dirty after using it.
hudibras 10y ago
"OSS is great! Anybody can make a fork and improve the software!" "Hey guys, it's me, Microsoft. I made a fork and improved the software." "BURN THE WITCH"
- apathy 10y ago
  I think he was under the impression that using the GPL (instead of a BSD license) would avoid commercial forks. Personally I don't care, Gentleman doesn't care, and the Revolution people (some at least) are pretty good guys. But leading with the above would be shitty click bait }:-)
  - jordigh 10y ago
    They would avoid proprietary forks (not commercial, that's not the same thing) if they actually defended the damn GPL. Instead, they kept weakening it, kept trying to change the API from GPL to LGPL (and I think they actually did it) and encouraged non-free plugins on CRAN. The license will need to a better job of protecting work donated to the commons than GPL2 seems to have done. https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-and-build-something-better/ https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-... The license is fine, the problem is that they didn't actually use it correctly! Well, this is what happens.
    - apathy 10y ago
      Yeah, but on the other hand the resulting project has happily eaten research statistics. It's not all bad.
cwyers 10y ago
They contribute source, packages, they ship an R distribution with IKML available on multiple platforms for free... what's value-subtracted here?
- apathy 10y ago
  All of the above can be done relatively easily by any individual. And like I said, the Revolution guys aren't all bad. It's really just revo R that I find uncompelling. Even that wasn't always true, but Hadley and Rstudio have buried everyone else as far as dev/write up/presentation integrated environments go. Plus I like Hadley and Winston and joe better on a personal level. Nothing against David and his coworkers, they're great too. I just find it easy to connect as a developer and statistician with the Rstudio guys.

by apathy 10y ago

Christ almighty, why not just use SAS at that point. Ross Ihaka was so disappointed by Revolution's value-subtracted offerings that he disowned the entire R project.

worik 10y ago

Have you a reference for that?

fnord123 10y ago
I'm not sure what GP means by Ross "disowning the entire R project". Maybe it's a brain fart. But Ross does (if this is indeed him commenting on dbms2.com) want people to not use Revolution Analytics fork: http://www.dbms2.com/2010/05/04/revolution-analytics-confused/ http://www.dbms2.com/2010/05/04/revolution-analytics-confuse...
_Wintermute 10y ago
Probably referring to this: https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-and-build-something-better/ https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-...
- apathy 10y ago
  Bingo. I exaggerated... Very slightly. Thanks for digging that link up.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
    Six years is a long time in software.

curiousgal 10y ago

Isn't SAS better than R?

voltagex_ 10y ago
Depends how much money you have
SmellTheGlove 10y ago
I think so, at least for my use, but I'm at a large company and I don't see the licensing costs (nor do they directly come out of my budget). It's not to say R is bad, it just takes (me) longer to do similar work. Of course, we're also a Teradata shop and being able to run R in-database is awfully tempting - but I doubt we'd save any money at that point (even if its not my budget, still have to justify it), and we'd have a ton of stuff to migrate. And we're not really performance bottlenecked right now. There's a cost tradeoff there, but R has really been awesome in getting really solid statistical and data manipulation software in the hands of individuals and small businesses for free. For instance, I don't have SAS at home - my basement hacking uses R.
- JohnDoe365 10y ago
  What I can say is that SAS allows you to get quicker at visualisations and analysis without actually knowing what you are doing. R requires you to think before and ask the questions you would like to get from the data.
  - apathy 10y ago
    Another excellent point. R, like UNIX, is user friendly. It's just very demanding towards its friends.
nol13 10y ago
Kind of, in the same way that waterboarding is better than good cop bad cop.
apathy 10y ago
If you like writing COBOL, sure. Naturally, for anything interesting (eg fitting a lasso penalized GLM) SAS (and others) encourage you to simply call out to R. (I will now wait for someone to amuse me by bringing up the misleadingly named PROC in SAS that does L1 regularization... to linear models.) I can use either, personally I prefer R. Or Python. Or scala. Or really anything that isn't SAS. I feel dirty after using it.

hudibras 10y ago

"OSS is great! Anybody can make a fork and improve the software!" "Hey guys, it's me, Microsoft. I made a fork and improved the software." "BURN THE WITCH"

apathy 10y ago
I think he was under the impression that using the GPL (instead of a BSD license) would avoid commercial forks. Personally I don't care, Gentleman doesn't care, and the Revolution people (some at least) are pretty good guys. But leading with the above would be shitty click bait }:-)
- jordigh 10y ago
  They would avoid proprietary forks (not commercial, that's not the same thing) if they actually defended the damn GPL. Instead, they kept weakening it, kept trying to change the API from GPL to LGPL (and I think they actually did it) and encouraged non-free plugins on CRAN. The license will need to a better job of protecting work donated to the commons than GPL2 seems to have done. https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-and-build-something-better/ https://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-... The license is fine, the problem is that they didn't actually use it correctly! Well, this is what happens.
  - apathy 10y ago
    Yeah, but on the other hand the resulting project has happily eaten research statistics. It's not all bad.

cwyers 10y ago

They contribute source, packages, they ship an R distribution with IKML available on multiple platforms for free... what's value-subtracted here?

apathy 10y ago
All of the above can be done relatively easily by any individual. And like I said, the Revolution guys aren't all bad. It's really just revo R that I find uncompelling. Even that wasn't always true, but Hadley and Rstudio have buried everyone else as far as dev/write up/presentation integrated environments go. Plus I like Hadley and Winston and joe better on a personal level. Nothing against David and his coworkers, they're great too. I just find it easy to connect as a developer and statistician with the Rstudio guys.